Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Spacecraft communications and navigation with Badri Younes

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Badri Younes says that a spacecraft that can’t communicate or find its way is worthless. He leads SCaN, NASA’s Space Communications and Navigation program, which manages resources like the agency’s Deep Space Network. SCaN is also preparing for a future that relies on optical communication and possibly even quantum computing. Younes takes us on an audio tour of SCaN’s work that extends beyond our solar system.  There’s more to explore at https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/2021-badri-younes-nasa-scanSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Staying in touch and finding your way in space, 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. Badri Younis says a spacecraft that can't communicate or that doesn't know where it is and where it's going isn't much good to anyone. He should know. Badri is a NASA Deputy Associate Administrator and the Program Manager of SCAN, Spacecraft Communications and Navigation. Wait till you hear about some of the amazing networks and technologies that SCAN is working with and that every NASA spacecraft and many others depend on. SCAN is also working on the bleeding edge of technology, including the wild and crazy field of quantum entanglement.

I'm always happy to welcome back Bruce Betts. This time his WhatsApp segment will feature four haiku inspired by our light sail solar sail. You know the problem with Apple podcasts? I can hardly ever tell who has left us a nice review. I mean, who the heck is Wendy Cerf and Black Dog Forever and Dr. Double E? I just want to say thank you. I hope you'll consider joining them.

It only takes a minute, but it's the easiest and cheapest thing you can do to give planetary radio a boost. You'll hear me mention to Badri Yunus that we expected astronauts to return from the International Space Station. Well, it happened according to plan. They rode Crew Dragon Endeavor to a safe splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean. That was Crew 2. The launch of Crew 3 is imminent, as we published this week's show. Over in the down lake, you can learn how to help rovers on Mars. NASA needs citizen scientists who can train an algorithm that will enable Curiosity, the Mars science laboratory, to do a better job of finding its way across the red planet.

The opportunity is called AI for Mars, and you can learn about it in the November 5 edition of our newsletter at planetary.org. While you're there, you can lose yourself in a dying red giant star. The Hubble image is simply beautiful. star. The Hubble image is simply beautiful. You've probably heard about the Deep Space Network, that globe-spanning system of giant dishes that allows us to receive data from across the solar system. But what about the Near Space Network, and the tracking and data relay satellites, and the Laser Communications Relay Demonstration, the Deep Space Atomic Clock, or NASA's Commercial Communications Services Division. I could go on, but I'd be cutting into the time we have for the person who leads these and other efforts. Badri Younis is a world-renowned expert in telecommunications.

As you'll hear, his passion for his work extends far beyond the networks and technologies he manages. He couldn't wait to tell me about the outreach work SCAN conducts, especially for students and young professionals. You'll hear him mention the NTIA. That's the National Telecommunications and Information Administration here in the U.S. Badri Younis, thank you very much for joining us on Planetary Radio. I've been told for ages that I should really get you as a guest on the show because of the work of the part of NASA, SCAN, that you lead, which I hope we're going to be talking about many facets of over the next few minutes.

Thanks for joining us. Oh, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Definitely the kind of things we do and, you know, it's so critical to enable NASA, its mission objective, the technology that we do also is so critical to the country's advance from a national security perspective as well as national economic perspective. a national security perspective as well as national economic perspective. So much of the work of your part of NASA, SCAN, underlies everything else that we talk about on planetary radio, at least everything that happens in space that we talk about. I'll start with the one that maybe is the best known by the general public, and that's the DSN, the Deep Space Network, which never fails to amaze

those of us who see what it does as it communicates with spacecraft as far away as Voyager, but with so many spacecraft coordinating all of the exchange of data with spacecraft really now across the solar system. It's quite an operation. Yeah, we have a very extensive and world-class operation, support and missions, whether they are in deep space or in the near-Earth environment. For deep space, we have a set of ground stations distributed around the globe.

We have three of them. Two of them are in the upper hemisphere and one in the lower hemisphere. They are our eyes and ears. They look deep into space, to the edge of the solar system and beyond. You mentioned Voyager 1 and Voyager 2. They have already crisscrossed the boundaries of our solar system. They are tens of billions of miles

away. And we are still communicating with them. We have different sets of antennas varying in size between 34 and 70 meters. The 70 meters are so huge. These are our Eiffel Towers.

They have been around for decades, providing support to all kinds of missions that have crisscrossed the heaven. For the near earth, we have two different kinds of networks. One of them relies on direct transmission to the ground, and one relies on using space at the data relaying point where missions will, instead of sending the data directly to the ground, because they may not be in view of the ground station, so they send it to a point way up in space, and that point in space will in turn relay the data back to a specific point on Earth.

Are you talking about TDRS, the Tracking and Data Relay Satellites? Exactly. The concept of TDRS came about in the early 70s. Remember when we were supporting the Apollos, we had so many stations, ground stations distributed around the globe. Many of them are in countries where the geopolitical situation does not allow us to go there anymore. Even back then, we had a lot of problems. Up to 30 stations were distributed on land and in water to provide support to the Apollo mission. And even with that,

we could not exceed the 30% support for that mission. So we came up with a concept. Instead of relying on direct-to-Earth communications, let's have these points in space where they have everything underneath the geosynchronous arc in view. You can provide near-real-time communication anywhere anywhere and anytime 100% of the time. And that's where the concept of TDRS came about. And it helped advance the technology not only for NASA and enabled this near real-time support to our human spaceflight mission, but also advanced the technology across the industry to include the commercial industry.

advanced technology across the industry, to include the commercial industry. I remember, because I'm old enough, when the first TDRS satellite was put above the earth. And now I read that you were on, what, the third generation of these relays? Exactly. The TDRS constellation varies in generation. The early generation, these are the TDRSs that we fielded in the 80s. Then the second generation, we fielded in the early 2000s. And most recently, we completed the third generation where the last TDRS we launched was in 2017.

With that, we completed NASA's investment in tracking and data relay satellites. When we started TDRS, we were the only game in town. The commercial industry has not evolved to the point that could meet our unique requirements. We see what's happening in the industry now. We are very optimistic about meeting our needs and requirements by commercializing all of these services. So this is similar to what we see in other areas of NASA that get more attention, probably, like the commercial crew program. We're going to see some astronauts coming home, possibly today, as you and I speak speak on Monday the 8th,

and the commercial lunar payload system. So you're basically looking to follow that model. Exactly. And we really consider this as key as one of our driving requirements is to foster an affordable and growing U.S. space industry. For that, we are going after commercial capabilities to leverage that into our operation for the purpose of increasing efficiency

and robustness of communication. This will move us out of the routine operation to make us focus on the next generation. So we are working on the kind of transformational technology that will allow us and will allow the industry to keep on moving forward, meeting the ever-growing appetite of the consumer for more bandwidth and more capacity. We are working now with the regulator to ensure that the regulatory framework

addresses this change in paradigm. You know, we are moving kind of away from the bifurcated situation before where, you know, you had government system and commercial system. We are trying to build the bridges between the two, the two communities, if not merging the two. Our main objective, essentially, within SCAN is to focus on building this interoperable and resilient space and ground communication and navigation infrastructure. We see our appetite for data and for capacity and for bandwidth growing, because we always want more and more. So our goal here is to enable that thing, at the same time, making it more robust and secure, while ensuring that the cost remains affordable for all of our missions, that's the human spaceflight as well as the robotic missions.

There's a question that just occurred to me, and I don't know if you have a good answer for this, but is there a way to characterize the amount of data, the number of bits that SCAN facilitates across the systems that you coordinate, like TDRS, like the Deep Space Network. I mean, we're talking about a lot of bits here, aren't we? Yeah, we are talking tens of terabits, if not terabyte per day. Wow.

It definitely varies per day. So when you talk about terabytes per day, usually you look at the book, how many bytes are in a book, are there like a million, then you are talking a million books worth of data that go through our system on a daily basis. I don't know, I've never tried to quantify the content of the Library of Congress in terms of byte. But if I have to do that, probably we are at that level on a daily basis. My God. Okay, I'm glad I asked.

Before we leave TDRS, I also want to mention that anybody who goes to the SCAN website and looks up TDRS can find a paper model of a TDRS satellite that can be cut out and printed and cut out and built by a young person out there. Of course, we'll put a link up to your website on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio. But I bring it up because I'm hoping that before we finish the conversation, we can talk about other ways that you are bringing young people into the work of SCAN. But let's go on to talking about the next brilliant step in space communication. I do mean brilliant, by the way. Can I mention something about this cutout?

Sure. One of the critical functions that really I value so much is our outreach program. Getting as early as possible to our youth and trying to sensitize them to the value of science and technology and mathematics and engineering and even art. Everything completes everything in the build-up of the space story. We work with the youth to sensitize them to that

and to really ensure that they see things from our perspective to help them grow as people and also later on, potentially professionally as they go to college and beyond in helping them decide on what discipline they need to pursue. And we have a very strong program within SCAN, as well as the agency, you know, to very good STEAM objectives. And we are all working collectively to have our youth benefit from that program. Well, your colleague, Al Feinberg, who connected the two

of us, told me that if I mentioned your work with young people, that you would definitely want to pursue that. So I was going to save more of this to the end of the conversation, but let's talk about it now. In the programs that you offer, I know you have internships. And apparently these offer a lot of great real world experience. Does it start at the undergraduate level or even younger than that? Even much younger. I take people from high school all the way to postgraduate level and try to sensitize them to some of the critical disciplines that are needed in the communication domain as well as other scientific domain.

So much of the science and the technology and the things we do are aligned with our objective at the labeling capability that we see critical for the agency to grow. We see ourselves as an enabling entity. If you don't have space communication, navigation, what else do you have? Just big, expensive pieces of I don't know what in space. Communication is critical. And we see that in today's world, everything is reliant on information.

So communication is an integral part of the information industry. If you don't communicate, the information is worthless. Yes, yes. So we work very hard to sensitize these folks and to give them a place where they can grow. Before the summer intern program that I established within SCAM, we used to have something, the Fresh Out Initiative. I used to take a student right fresh out of school and put them in our labs for about three years to do nothing else but to work behind the bench. They needed that experience. Very often, they graduate from school and they don't get their hands dirty.

I wanted them to learn how to fail and how to recover, what else may happen behind the bench. Teach them how to solder while you're at it. Exactly. To get the pleasure of making things happen. You know, you don't graduate students like this from the universities. You know, you don't graduate students like this from the universities. They get the theoretical work and very often many universities fail to give them the practical, the hands-on things. These are, as I say, the icing on my cake. The outreach program where we go to high school, even to elementary schools, to give presentation on the value of STEAM,

trying to sensitize students to these kind of disciplines. Also, the summer intern, we take these young students from college, even from high school, and we stay with them until they graduate. And we keep track of them, we help them, we mentor them, and we give them the behind-the-bench experience. My God, I'm so fascinated by this internet generation. You know, when we grew up, we were working with the sliding rule. There was no internet. Back then, remember, when we were growing up, we needed something. We had to go to the local library. Very often, we'll go to the library.

We look for the book, and the book has been borrowed by someone else. You have to wait a month. So true. So the internet generation has a wealth of information. They need us to really try to provide them a focus and to help them how to use this information to better themselves and to better society around them. And I would only add, look at how you and I are talking to each other right now. We can see each other even if the audience can't see us.

But here we are having a real-time, low-latency conversation via the internet. That adds to the value of communication, by the way. You know, that's what we do for NASA. Absolutely. That's why we have the cameras turned on. There's one other program that I got to mention because I think it goes back to even before I started doing planetary radio, which was 19 years ago. But it was already at the Planetary Society. And I went out to Apple Valley in Southern California because there was a big event going on,

and I took my video camera and I talked to some kids who were sitting behind consoles actually working with dishes at Goldstone, one of your three Deep Space Network facilities, of course. The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Program, and I made this feature, like I said, many years ago. I wasn't until I started preparing for this show that I saw that you have also a visitor center, not at Goldstone, but in Barstow, the nearby desert town where everybody stops on the way to Las Vegas to, you know, get a hamburger or something. There's a Harvey house there, which was, if anybody wants to see it, an interesting old movie.

It's called The Harvey Girls with Judy Garland. One of the Harvey houses has now been repurposed in part by you as a visitor center. I'm told that these programs for these kids out there in the desert, that that continues as well. Yeah, and what you were talking about is our Gavert program, where we take some of our antenna dishes and we repurpose them to support radio astronomy. And we work, you know, with universities and other students to have access and to do their research in this area.

Yeah, these are elementary school kids. Yeah, yeah. And even at the elementary school level, trying to sensitize them to the value of space science to include radio astronomy. This program is still going on very, it's a strong program that we have. At every location where we have a ground station, we have like a visitor center, a way that we pay back the community that hosts our ground station to pay them back with the kind of activities that can help them and help their children to grow. Wherever we go, they embrace our, you know, they accept our presence. They provide us the support.

This aspect of our activity does complete our program. I'm one of those who think that, you know, scientific discoveries and information have no value unless you communicate it to the general public. Establishing these visitor centers is one way where we can communicate all of the achievement that NASA does, not only NASA, other space agencies, is one way where we can communicate all of the achievement that NASA does, not only NASA, other space agencies,

and all of the investigation in space are communicated in a way that's acceptable to our general public. Well, we are very much with you on that, as you might imagine, since we're the Planetary Society, and our leader is in that business of communicating science. Let me turn back now to those transformational technologies that you hinted at. One of them, I called it brilliant. It was a little pun because we're talking about optical or laser communication, which I believe SCAN is doing a lot of work with. is doing a lot of work with.

Do you see optical as the next great leap in getting information across the solar system and from orbit down to Earth and up again? Definitely. We have been evolving. We started in the UHF. We moved into the S-band. We moved into the K-band, the KA-band. And the demand for spectrum has become

so high. It's growing exponentially. You need more and more bandwidth. Definitely the only other option is to keep on moving up in spectrum. However, you know, we can take a quantum leap by going into something where the amount of spectrum is so huge and can meet the needs of our scientists as well as the needs of our society, which is the optical domain. You have a huge bandwidth available to you and the implementation of the technology comes at a good price and a good swap value. The optical payload can provide you up to two order magnitude better performance or capability than the RF payload.

Wow, so 100 times better, 100 times better bandwidth. Exactly, up to 100 times better. At the same time, much of the radio frequency is regulated. And so many walls have been built between different communities. The optical domain has not been regulated. And they provide a common domain where all of these communities can interoperate. common domain where all of these communities can interoperate. So it will allow for better sharing, better interoperability, better cross-support among a number of communities, be that the commercial community, the government community, whether you are doing space research, whether you

are doing Earth observation. This is a common spectrum where they can all interoperate and share that information. And you can trade that in terms of data rate or in terms of size and power, the swap value, we call it. This also makes me think of something I was going to bring up, which is another part of SCAN's responsibilities, and that is coordination with other agencies around the world. And an agency, I mean, because I'm an old broadcast person and I love the history of radio and broadcast and television, I was aware of a group called the ITU, the International Telecommunications Union. What I did not know is that the ITU has been around since 1865, when I don't know what they had to deal with other than telegraph. I guess you are a substantial part of our representation worldwide through the ITU

to do the coordination that you were just talking about. Exactly. And we work with the international community to ensure that the spectrum is so critical for all kinds of activities, be that scientific observation as well as communication. It's a finite quantity, you know, and it's shared among so many entities and it doesn't have any border. When you send an RF signal, it crisscrosses the sky, not recognizing the boundaries of any country. So we have the International Telecommunication Unit that regulate the usage of the spectrum and ensure that it's used properly and better coordination take among member states. And they do that primarily, and for the last so many years,

they were focusing on Earth, on the globe, and the surrounding area. They've never paid attention to deep space, the moon and beyond. And NASA has been entrusted to work with other space agencies to provide the regulatory framework for activities over there. And other agencies also looked at NASA to provide that coordination among users for the use of frequencies beyond the near-Earth environment. So our relationship with ITU has been a relationship of trust. We provide that complementary support to the ITU by looking into areas beyond the near-Earth environment

to deep space. And we provide the knowledge and the technical competence to address technical challenges and technical issues that may emerge. And we work with other government agencies. So we are a key player within NTIA, and we work very closely with the State Department because it's critical for NASA to ensure that the spectrum not only be used properly, but also because of our global footprint. Our operation

is not confined to just the territorial limit of the United States. You know, we look at the entire planet and we go well beyond that into deep space. So we try to make sure that our global interests are protected. And everywhere we go, where we have a ground station, you know, or there are conferences, NASA's name and the achievement of NASA are well recognized and well respected. You are seconds away from hearing the rest of my conversation with Badri Younis here on Planetary Radio. From missions arriving at Mars to new frontiers in human spaceflight, 2021 has been an exciting year for space science and exploration. Hi, I'm Sarah, Digital Community Manager for the Planetary Society. What were

your favorite moments? You can cast your vote right now at planetary.org slash best of 2021 and help choose the year's best space images, mission milestones, memes, and more. That's planetary.org slash best of 2021. Thanks. Here's something else that only just occurred to me, and it is in this area of coordination of bandwidth. As you know, the plans, already well underway by a lot of groups, to put thousands, tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands of new satellites in orbit around the Earth.

All of these will need to communicate not just to and from Earth, but perhaps in many cases with each other. Do you have concerns as an expert in this area that would be sort of the parallel to astronomers' concerns about how these little bright spots crossing the sky are going to interfere with astronomy. Do you have concerns about how they will be interfering with each other just in terms of communication? My only concern is the level of complexity that's going to be added to our operation. Definitely, some system may not operate as expected and may cause some interference. These things, we have a way to identify that and we have a way to resolve potential interference issues. But going back to the issue of the population density in space and NASA's role in trying to commercialize space and trying to create economic opportunities. We look at the situation down the road and we are going to see a heavily populated environment

that will need to use either the spectrum properly or to have the communication capabilities available to them whenever they need it and wherever they are. The environment is going to be so complex. That's why we are moving into autonomous operation and autonomous navigation, as opposed to having someone on the ground scheduling services and work it in a very tedious way in real time. Because no matter what, the complexity will not allow people on the ground to manage it properly. So we are really working the technology

that will allow us to do that, building on better communication protocols, radios that are multilingual. And when I say multilingual, that means they can talk across a large frequency band. They can reconfigure themselves in time and in frequency and in waveform, such that they adapt and they'll be able to communicate with any provider up there.

They're smart. They have to be extremely smart. We are pushing something beyond the smart radio to the cognitive radio that can learn on their own and be able to manage themselves. And this is an active thing that in addition to the transformational technology that I talked about, which is the optical technology. And hopefully in the future, we'll talk about quantum communication and quantum technology. At NASA, we have designated the 2020s to be the decade of light, where we are infusing optical capability into operation. And that's going to start as soon as we launch our next payload into space.

We have a satellite that we have in partnership with other government agencies that's launching next month. And it's carrying a highly capable two optical payload that will be able to communicate direct to the ground and will be able to communicate in space to space to provide the user the flexibility, whether they want to go direct to ground or whether they want to go up into space. Is this LCRD? And if so, what does that stand for? Laser communication relay demonstration. It's nothing fancy about the algorithms.

But that's going to be our first opportunity to demonstrate and show the feasibility of operating in space using optical communications. Other agencies have done it, but to a limited extent. They're just going from space to space. Our comm payload will go in all directions and will provide the user maximum flexibility in relaying the user data. I believe working with Photon is going to be, you know, a quantum leap into the future. And it's critical to enable quantum technology because you are working with

photons. So quantum communication, optical communication is critical and to enable quantum communications, where we see opportunities to have other quantum activities enabled by quantum networking, such as distributed quantum computing, in addition to what the quantum technology brings to communication, you know, in terms of capability and robustness. Let me stop you there, because I definitely wanted to get this to this new area, the area that Einstein called spooky action at a distance, quantum. And we know that there are many agencies around the world, international agencies that are beginning to do quantum research using spacecraft.

So it's fascinating to hear what activity SCAN, on behalf of NASA and the United States, has underway. What is the potential here? I mean, do you see potential for using entangled particles that are so truly spooky and mysterious to actually facilitate communication or other purposes? Yeah, and we are working not just alone. We are working with many other government agencies.

We are forming partnership even with the commercial sector. If we didn't find a potential for it, we wouldn't have explored it. But we demonstrated so many things in the lab. Space provides the best avenue for enabling quantum communication because on the ground, if you are to communicate using fiber optics and whatever other means, you experience a lot of losses and you need to regenerate the signal more often and you may end up losing that entangled state between the two entangled photons. There is nothing magical. It's physics, you know, what we

are doing. And we are pushing the boundaries of physics. I don't know how far we are going to go. Will we be able to break through the existing laws of physics? That's something to be demonstrated. existing laws of physics, that's something to be demonstrated. All we are doing now is trying to demonstrate that it can be done using engineering capability and the kind of technology that will, you know, will take us further into physics. And sooner or later, we are going to potentially hit a ceiling. And what are we going to do as humanity, you know, need to keep on growing, will definitely need to break through. Where will that take us? I'm not going to do as humanity, you know, need to keep on growing? We'll definitely need to break through. Where will that take us? I'm not going to speculate at this point.

Absolutely fascinating, though, to hear about. I suppose, in a sense, all communication that relies on photons, including radio frequency, is quantum communication because we are talking about photons. More classical physics, exactly. Yes. So going back to optical, I'm sure you are eagerly looking forward to the first of the Artemis launches. With any luck, early next year to be followed by Artemis II, that will, we hope, carry men and women around the moon,

returning humans to the moon, at least its vicinity for the first time in ages. I read that Artemis 2, that mission, will be testing optical communications. Is that right? Exactly. You know, the potential for this technology is so great to enable not only robotic mission, but also human, you know, space flights. So we are seeing the value of that and trying to demonstrate it can contribute to the human space flight. But because we didn't have an operational experience with it, we are having a demonstration on the second flight. And based on that, the result of this demonstration, we'll see how we need to evolve the technology to meet future needs. But definitely NASA is all geared up now to enable the Artemis

program with all of its flights, you know, all of its phases to be successful. NASA has made a decision to make deep space a permanent home in deep space. And we would like to go as far as we can go. And we have so many technologies to be demonstrated. And the moon is only a station, as a stop that we are going to demonstrate some of this technology. Our objective is to go beyond, to go to Mars and even beyond. The past technology and the capabilities were,

you know, were a problem. Now we see so much technology has been fielded and so many new concepts for conquering space emerging. We really should not, how to say it, be satisfied with only small achievement. We are looking big and we're trying to achieve big things. And that's what's so beautiful about NASA, is just your ability to dream and to dream big. And the agency is all about making those dreams come true and a reality. It's such a fascinating

time to be at NASA. I'm glad you feel that way. It sure is exciting to talk about for people like me. Here's another one that a lot of us at the Planetary Society and elsewhere around the world are excited about. It's the Psyche mission that will launch next year, we hope, and head out for the first time to one of those asteroids that we believe at least is made out of, mostly out of metal, iron. Iron, yeah. Yeah, it should be fascinating. And I read that, again, there is an optical communication, at least test, that is aboard that spacecraft,

or will be aboard that spacecraft. I remember when we landed the Mars Laboratory. Curiosity, Mars Science Laboratory, right? Yeah, yeah. And I was at the dark room and everyone was talking about wouldn't have been a good idea to have had streaming video coming from that mission. Bandwidth has always been a problem. How much data can you transmit?

And the potential for optical communication to give you the needed bandwidth to support not only these robotic missions, but the human mission as we go into the moon and Mars beyond. We will not be satisfied with few kilobits or few megabits per second. We'll be sending a human over there that we need to maintain the same quality of life for them as they crisscross the heavens. So we'll need to give them the ability to stream up videos and see their favorite show. Now they're going to want Netflix on their way to the planet.

They want Netflix. So we definitely need the bandwidth. Netflix so we definitely need the bandwidth if I have to do it with RF I will need a major a large infrastructure putting so much burden on the mission itself to put huge large antennas and com payload to enable that no optical can do it at a fraction of the weight and give you they can give you the bandwidth to stream video and to transmit so many high-definition channels up there. And we haven't even gotten to the navigation side, the N in SCAN. There's one particular project that I want to ask you about because it's one that we featured on Planetary Radio.

Back in June of 2019, when the Deep Space Atomic Clock got launched into orbit, it went up on the Falcon Heavy, the same rocket that took our LightSail 2. They're both still up there. Is that test now complete and has it proven itself? Definitely, the stability of the clock is so critical in any operation. The atomic clock was designed to provide us two-order magnitude, 100 times better performance than the GPS clock. There's that two orders of magnitude again. Two-order magnitude.

And we definitely have demonstrated and achieved that goal. So now we are working on trying to miniaturize the technology and improve it. We've demonstrated it now to operationalize the technology by making it a little bit smaller to fit on any size spacecraft. It's so critical because it reduces the time that you need to be in contact with the spacecraft because the clock is stable. Everything is so stable about it.

You don't need to communicate with it on a regular basis to provide correction. I see. Yeah. So the clock stability is so critical in navigating through space and deep space in particular. in navigating through space and deep space in particular. And so we have a lot of hope that the technology can become operational within a few years. We are looking for partnership with other government agencies. And the larger the partnership pool is, the faster we can, you know, field it into operation.

We achieved our objective. Well, congratulations on that. And congratulations to that team led by the Jet Propulsion Lab. I cannot speak enough about the competence and the skill that we have at JPL. Awesome folks. They keep on beat expectation and really do the impossible. And they have been doing that for more than 50 years. As well as the other NASA centers. We work with all of the NASA centers,

in particular Goddard Space Flight Center, the Glenn Center over there also. They develop the technology for us. And Goddard works on whatever in the near-Earth environment from a technology. And also sometimes they do some deep space. The beauty is a beautiful thing that we have a level of partnership and collaboration among all of the NASA centers, although they are competing to get more business.

But the level of collaboration is so amazing. That's what makes NASA so special. We work as a team and the power of the many is by far better than the power of the one. The scientific discoveries that we are going to have are within reach in our lifetime. So amazing. That's what we try to work with students about, try to sensitize them to the value that NASA brings to society and to humanity. We are looking at the future. We definitely need the kind of cadre and technological skills

that can carry on for us, carry where we are going to live off. That's why it's so critical that our work doesn't really just stop with us leaving the agency, that our work will continue through the generation of folks that we've sensitized and recruited to continue the mission. us leaving the agency, that our work will continue through the generation of folks that we've sensitized and recruited to continue the mission. I also think of that classic term, spinoff, and that is something that SCAN also contributes

to. So are there areas of development of research and creation of technology and systems that you can point to, that SCAN has facilitated, that maybe are part of our everyday life now? Well, definitely the concept of tracking and data relay satellite that now created the revolution in the satellite industry. You know, in the area of technology, we're talking about new radios, you know, smart radios that have been commercialized. And in the future, you are going to see all of our optical technology being commercialized and be available off the shelf.

That's just to say, you know, to mention a few. Something that has been clear across this entire conversation is how much you love your work and the passion you have for this. You certainly seem to share that with the other scientists and engineers and astronauts and officials that we get to talk to on this show. I appreciate that, Matt. And I'm so happy that you can see that through me. And definitely it's that passion for space and knowledge that drove me to NASA. You know, since early age, I would be sitting on the balcony

looking, gazing through the stars and wondering about who we are. Are we alone? So really, I look at space as a place where there are so many answers. In order to find the answers, we need to explore. You know, exploration is in everyone's blood. It started when we started living in caves.

We always tried to look at what's beyond this hill. Then we got to a river. We wondered what's beyond this river. Then we got to the ocean. What's beyond this ocean? And we discovered a new land. We met new people. You know, civilization started to grow.

And as civilization's people and culture started to interact, new things started to emerge. And civilization started to, the growth started to accelerate. Then we looked into space and we really landed on the moon. I was looking at the landing on the moon. That's what motivated me the most, that we can do it, that we can. Human beings should not be bounded. And anyone who tells anyone that you cannot do this and you cannot do that,

they should not listen to them. You can do anything you set your mind to, you know. And this is the same thing in, you know, in science and discovery and technology. We really need to let our imagination roam. We are as limited as the limit of our imagination. And our imagination doesn't have any limit. You have to believe that you can do it. And you have to put together a roadmap. How are you going to get there? Very often in looking at plans for the future, I tell my folks, and they are all very smart people, and bring people from the science

fiction community also to participate in my activity. I say, I ask them, can you please go to the year 2040 and tell me how the situation is going to be there and what technologies will be needed by then. Then come back to me and give me a plan how to get back into the future. You know, we can grow the smart, we can grow the knowledge, but the imagination is so key. That's what created great artists, great musicians, all of these symphonies. Because of this imagination, if you pursue it fully and follow your passion, you can do the impossible. That's the message we try to get to our young folks whenever we talk to them. And just to see the spark in their eyes as they listen to me is the best reward of my job.

eyes as they listen to me is the best reward of my job. Keep doing the impossible, Badri, at least keep imagining it and how we're going to get there by sitting at workbenches and coming up with brilliant ideas and soldering them together. Very exciting conversation. Thank you for taking us through the work of SCAN. Matt, thank you for having me. Sometimes we wonder why do they pay us? We should be paying the agency for working there because really NASA has given us the opportunity to grow and to implement our dreams. And I would like to encourage anyone who dreams big to really look at NASA as the place to pursue. I feel the same way about the Planetary Society. Don't tell them I said that they don't need to pay me. And I also think it's long overdue for me. I've been saying since probably the beginning of this show, I need to get out there to Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope Program once again as they do their work, as they prepare to achieve the impossible, reaching across that final frontier.

Badri, thank you so much for this. You have my invitation to visit anytime and not only for yourself, all of your audience. The Visitor Center is open for everyone. Please visit us. Hopefully it can give you a small sample of the kind of work we do and why we do it. Badri Younis is the Deputy Associate Administrator, the guy who runs SCAN for NASA, Space Communications and Navigation, and has been doing this work for a long time. Thanks again, Badri. It's my pleasure.

Thank you, Matt, for having me on your radio talk. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here he is, the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. It's Bruce Betts, back once again with a beautiful night sky and some other fun stuff for us. Welcome. Hey there. Hi there.

Ho there, Matt. Are you as happy as can be? We go to the night sky and I'm just going to be boring you every week talking about look over in the West for the next few weeks. Venus, super bright looking, stunning. And to its upper left, you will see dimmer Saturn, yellowish and bright Jupiter. Jupiter and Saturn closing in on Venus. It'll stay in a similar position for a few weeks while the others close in and make a lovely planetary line. In the pre-dawn, you're going to have to get a good view to the east and you might be able to check out Mars,

but it'll get a lot easier to see and a lot brighter coming up. And that's your summary of the night sky. That was quick. Did you want more? You're the sky master. Well, okay. Look farther over and kind of in the south. There's a star that's not a planet. It's not near any other bright star. It's near plenty of stars. That's Fomalhaut, which I don't know how to pronounce, but I enjoy saying Fomalhaut.

Fomalhaut. That's what it is. It's just hanging out there kind of on its own in terms of bright stars. All right, that's enough. Now we move on to this week in space history. 1969, Apollo 12 launched, headed to the moon with the second human landing. And in 2014, the Philae lander became the first lander to land on a comet. Comet 67P, that was the target of the Rosetta Philae mission. More of a first to bounce on a comet, from what I'm told.

It had those funny little screw feet that didn't work, or maybe they did work, but the comet was just too, the material was too loose. I think he had to take the old Air Force adage, anything you can walk away from is a good landing. Anything where your humans find you eventually is a good landing in spacecraft, and they did achieve that. And they got some science. We move on to Random Space Fact.

That was the most magnificent rendition in a long time. Thank you. Compliment for today, insult for the past. So, the DART mission, the Double Asteroid Redirect Test, which I know you've had on the, talking about recently on Space Policy Edition, might be

talking more about, launches in a couple weeks. Slams a spacecraft into an asteroid, a double asteroid. Slams into the smaller component, Dimorphos. It's going kind of fast. How fast is it? It's going 6.6 kilometers per second, or about 4.1 miles per second, when it slams into the asteroid and vaporizes and causes the asteroid to change its orbit just a wee bit,

but enough that we can measure it in a first planetary defense asteroid redirect test. How fast is it? Oh, I missed my cue. I'm sorry. I was way off. What is up with your timing? Our friend Nancy Chabot is going to be back next week, just a week prior to the launch. She is the coordination lead for DART at the Applied Physics Lab, Johns Hopkins University. And I'm looking forward to getting that pre-launch review of the mission from her. Yeah, it's a great mission and she'll be great talking about it. Shall we move on to the trivia contest?

I asked you, who was the first person to fly two orbital space missions? How did we do, Matt? Well, the response was lower than usual. I don't know why. But we also, not only was quantity off, quality was off. A lot of people got confused by this one. And they're going to accuse you of being the tricky chief scientist that you are. Here is what I believe is the correct answer from our poet laureate, Dave Fairchild in Kansas.

answer from our poet laureate Dave Fairchild in Kansas. Gordon Cooper went to space and orbited the heavens, flying in his Mercury the right stuff called Faith 7. Two years later, Cooper flew, his Gemini was nice, and so became the first of all to orbit Terra twice. That is correct, Gordo, Gordon Cooper. So how was I tricky? You included the word orbital, first to make two orbital flights. Well, if they listened to the show, I spazzed out and said, orbital. Okay, maybe I didn't. But maybe on the contest page, I should have as well. You know, the visible version of that. Because a lot of people said Gus Grissom.

Well, Gus Grissom's first flight, Mercury 4, as you well know, was a suborbital. Tricky, tricky. Well, in spite of that, a lot of people still got it right. Among them, first time winner, Patrick Emerson. Congratulations, Patrick. Also from Kansas, by the way, who indeed said it was Gordo Cooper. First was Mercury 9, 1963. Second was Gemini 5 in 1965. Patrick, we're going to be sending you that safe and sane Planetary Society kick asteroid, rubber asteroid. Congratulations.

Congratulations. And here is more. John Judge in Washington. I thought it was Wally Schirra on Gemini 6A or a Soviet cosmonaut, but was surprised that it was Gordo. Hudson Ansley in New Jersey thought it was interesting that Gordon was also the first American to spend an entire day in space, the first to sleep in space, and the last American launched on an entirely solo orbital mission, which I think was pretty interesting, actually. 34 hours in total in space, more than all five of the previous Mercury astronauts combined, even before he got to Gemini. That came from Matthew Eason in Virginia. Those were a lot of good facts.

They are. They're pretty good random space facts, aren't they? Here's something from Mel Powell. He got the answer right, Mel, in California. He said he was also sure it was Wally Schirra. He says, thank goodness I looked it up instead of being sure, but Schirra was the first with the hat trick. Mercury 8, Gemini 6A, and Apollo 7.

And then he adds in bold, don't read this if BB is going to use it later. Oh man, I got to come up with a new question. By the way, the only person to fly in all three programs, Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. And he was just a fun guy anyway. Finally, this from Gene Lewin with a tribute to Wally, Mr. Schirra. Hockey has the original six, NASA the Mercury 7, six skated pucks across icy blue lines, seven crossed Carmen to heaven. Of the seven, good old Wally Schirra orbited in Mercury 8

and then again in Gemini 6A, his second mission, a sort of date. Moving then to the Apollo team, crossing that line in the sky for his third, first astronaut to achieve that there mark in three different NASA program birds. Nice. Thank you program birds. Nice. Thank you, Gene.

Yeah, nice tribute. Nice tribute. He was always one of my favorite astronauts was Wally. And there are the birds, too. What do you got for next time? I asked you who was the first person to fly two orbital space missions. We just discussed that extensively. Well, in a weird twist, today I'm going to ask you,

who was the first Soviet cosmonaut to fly two orbital space missions? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You have this time until Wednesday, November 17 at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And we will award the winner, one of those Planetary Society kick asteroid rubber asteroids. But wait, there's more. As Bruce is fond of saying, we had an auction at the Planetary Society not too long ago. And among the items auctioned was the chance to have your haiku read during the What's Up segment of Planetary Radio. read during the What's Up segment of Planetary Radio.

The winning bid in that portion of the auction was put forward by Lee Schulteis. And we have some haiku from Lee. Lee, thank you so much for your support, but also for these haiku, which are all light sail inspired, although he points out they also apply to regular ocean-going sailing ships as well. Here's the first of them. It has always been that each time a sail unfurls, a new world opens. Good start. You want the next one? Sure. The golden light streams. The blue oceans move below. The silver sail fills.

I guess that's definitely us. That's light sail for sure. Silver sails. Okay, here's number three. Every adventure and tale of glory begins with an open sail. And finally... we have always sailed on a power around us that we cannot see.

Yeah, bravo, bravo, bravo. Thank you very much, Lee Schultes. Thank you for your support. Now I think we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky and think about

the farthest place on earth that you visited relative to where you live now. Thank you, and good night. Huh. For me, I'm going to guess that's either Delhi or Agra, India. What about you? I think Australia. Australia would almost certainly do it for me. Keep thinking about that kind of stuff.

He is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. Why? Because we like him. That's Bruce Betts. And he joins us every week for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its members who love to communicate their love of space exploration. Become part of the conversation at planetary.org

slash join. Mark Hilverda and Jason Davis are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. Ad Astra.