Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Special Launch Coverage From the Kennedy Space Center

Episode Date: November 8, 2010

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Discovery, a launch too far, 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. A jam-packed show today as we take you to the Kennedy Space Center on the Florida Coast. I was there hoping to see my first ever liftoff. Sadly, shuttle discovery and the weather did not cooperate. The launch was scrubbed four times, but we were still able to record some great stuff for you. Emily Lakwala and Bill Nye will cover

last week's other big space story, a visit to Comet Hartley 2. And Bruce Batts will help me give away Packing for Mars, Mary Roach's great book about the science behind life in the void. Emily, just one topic that I think we should cover this time around, and that was a mission that was somewhat more successful than the attempt to launch Discovery. That's right. It was the fifth comet we've ever visited by a spacecraft, the smallest and most active. Hartley 2 passed by Deep Impact last week on November 4th, and it was just a really fun day, I think, for everybody involved. There are some beautiful images that you have posted at the blog, Planetary.org, including some animations.

That's right. It was just a spectacular comet to see up close because in basically every picture that they took, you can see the jets spitting out of the comet. And that's pretty unusual. Usually when you take photos of comets up close, spacecraft have to take one exposure for the nucleus and you can see its rocky shape and another longer exposure to see the jets. And then they have to post-process and superimpose to make something that looks like a comet. But this thing is just blasting so much stuff off of its surface that the jets are obvious in every photo. So it's really cool. Frankly, I think it's a fairly ugly object saved only by the attractiveness, the excitement of those jets. I have to agree with you. You know, these small objects, actually Temple 1, the other comet that was visited by Deep Impact,

also struck me as being a pretty ugly-looking body. But they're still fascinating. I mean, they've got these smooth areas and these rough areas. They have all the jets. They have funky depressions. This one has spires coming out of its surface, and it's just really rewarding to examine the images up close. Yeah, ugly but fascinating. As is your habit, you place this in the context of other objects that have been visited,

and that image is on the blog. But there is one other that sort of I had to do a double take, and that is a comparison to a man-made object. That's right. This is one of those objects. It's one of the smallest ones we've ever visited, so it's only about 2 kilometers long, which means that you can put it on the same picture as the biggest spacecraft ever built, which is, of course, the International Space Station, and you can see them both next to each other in one picture. It's kind of fascinating

to think about the differing scales of things in space and things that we've built. This is the coolest photo. It really looks like something out of a science fiction movie, and everybody needs to remember because you've got people out there who are going to accuse you of having the only shot where the ISS wasn't blacked out of this photo next to the comet. This is a creation that you've come up with. That's right. Heavily photoshopped. But I was actually inspired to do it because I had originally seen images taken by the Hayabusa spacecraft of its own shadow on the surface of the tiny asteroid Itokawa. Now, Itokawa is only about one-fifth as long as Hartley 2, so that thing was even smaller, but Hartley 2 is, I think, the second smallest object ever visited by a spacecraft.

Well, like we said, much more on the blog about epoxy slash deep impact and this most recent visit to a comet, Hartley 2. Emily, thanks again. Thank you. And there's much more yet to come on Hartley 2. The science has only begun. Emily Lakdawalla is the science and technology coordinator for the Planetary Society and a contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. Back in a moment with our special coverage of the non-launch of Discovery.

Hey, Bill Nye, the planetary guy here, executive director of the Planetary Society. And along with watching the remarkable scientific discoveries that were made on Hartley 2 Comet with Emily Lakdawalla, I was astonished. I'm impressed by not rocket science so much as rocket engineering. These guys flew this epoxy spacecraft, which was the extrasolar planet observing extended investigation spacecraft, right by Hartley 2, and they had to turn it periodically, beam information data back to the Earth, and then turn it back

to the comet. Back to the Earth, back to the comet, several times in order to get all the data down from this old spacecraft with a radiation-hardened electronic system. Very cool. This, my friends, is rocket engineering. This is the kind of thing that helps us make discoveries about near-Earth objects from which we learn about our past and we prepare for our future. It's all part of knowing our place in space. I've got to fly. Bill and I have the planetary gun. Tuesday morning, November 2nd.

A friend and I reach the Kennedy Space Center. The media center is about 10 miles past the gate. The briefing room is already packed with reporters who hope to cover the last launch of space shuttle Discovery. Monday was the original target for liftoff, but that was missed when gas leaks were discovered. Now, with the countdown underway again, we have gathered to learn about Robonaut 2, a very capable and impressively independent robotic assistant that the shuttle will deliver to the International Space Station, along with the permanent multi-purpose module

and a lot of supplies. Ron Diffler is NASA's Robonaut project manager. Ron Diffler, NASA's Robonaut Project Manager One example is it could set up a work site for the crew. For example, it could move back a thermal blanket and expose a piece of hardware that the crew needs to work on. Also, it could stand side by side with the crew person and hand the crew person tools, take back parts, help in whatever maintenance procedure is going on.

But to be able to do that, the robot has to have the range of travel, the workspace, and the speed to be comfortable to work around. As the briefing ends, I introduce myself to Ken Kramer. As the briefing ends, I introduce myself to Ken Kramer. You may have read his detailed insider reports on this and other missions in the Planetary Society blog. He has covered five shuttle launches. It never gets old hat. It gets more exciting every time I've been here. In fact, some of the last reports I did for the Planetary Society were the most exciting I did because I got to go inside the VAB and actually see

Discovery, well, not just rolled over, but also lifted and mated to the external tank. This is extremely rare to get this opportunity. Ken invited me to join him for a very brief conversation with Johnson Space Center Director Mike Coates. It happens that Coates was also Discovery's first pilot. Ken opened the interview by confessing that he is sad to see the shuttle era ending. Coates agreed. I'm equally sad, maybe sadder, that the shuttle program is ending. I think the American public will be surprised when they find out or realize that we are no longer flying the shuttle.

It's been an amazing vehicle for 30 years, and it's been a vehicle, while it's certainly expensive to operate and it's a very complicated vehicle, that same complexity gives it capability that no other vehicle even approaches. We can not only take huge amounts to orbit, vehicle even approaches. We can not only take huge amounts to orbit, sometimes huge amounts of delicate stuff to orbit, but we can bring it back. And we're not going to see that again for many, many generations. So I think we're going to miss the shuttle when it's gone. All my missions just coincidentally were on Discovery, and my first mission was Discovery's first flight. The first time we tried to launch, we had the pad abort, first shuttle pad abort, and a fire on the launch pad out there, which was not exactly what we expected on the first mission. In the cockpit, of course, as soon as

the engines cut off, we had the twang. Of course, we were rocking them. We rocked forward, and they got very quiet, and we're still kind of moving around. And it was about 12 or 15 seconds. Nobody said a word. Finally, Steve Hawley's first comment was, I thought we'd be a lot higher at MECO. And, you know, it's one of those things, I wish I'd said that. Doggone it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe you can tell us a little bit about the future of manned spaceflight and the Johnson Space Center.

It's very uncertain times now. Well, it is uncertain times. And I'm being as honest as I can be with the workforce. We're going to operate the space station for at least 10 years, hopefully longer. And we're going to do that from the Johnson Space Center, of course. We train the astronauts we train the astronauts that are going to go over and launch with the Russians for a number of years here

so we spend a lot of time flying back and forth both Moscow and Baikonur and it's hard even though we now have an authorization bill that the president signed so it's the authorization law, if you will. So the message is a little bit clearer. But not having a definitive program that we can point to is hard for the workforce, and it's hard when you're talking to schoolchildren,

which I've done for 32 years, and it's always been good that I can say, someday you're going to walk on Mars or you're going to do this or whatever. And I can point to a program. I can't point to a program for the first time in 50 years. Back to Discovery. I mean, it's a little tough to ask because you only flew. You only piloted Discovery. Did you learn that each orbiter had a personality?

And did you have a special affection for Discovery? Well, I had a special affection for Discovery just because I flew the first flight. And we watched it being built and finished. We knew we were going to be on the first flight. We watched it roll out out of Palmdale. So you kind of bond with it, if you will. And it's like a new car. You feel, wow, this is cool. First

time you drive off the lot in a new car, you feel pretty special. But every orbiter is identical now. Columbia was a little bit different because it was much stronger and heavier. Couldn't lift as much. But the rest of them have been essentially identical. When you're inside, you don't know which one you're in unless you read the nameplate. Sometimes you'll

and we hear occasionally a crewman will call down that he's called the nameplate. Sometimes you'll, and we hear occasionally a crewman will call down that he's, you know, called the wrong name. So inside, there's no difference. They don't really have a different personality. The Discovery's been a workhorse because it's flown more missions. It's the oldest, and which makes me feel pretty ancient now that, you know, I'm used to my airplanes I flew in Vietnam being in museums. I'm not used to my spaceships being in museums. That's going to be hard for me. Former astronaut Mike Coates. Our special coverage from the Kennedy Space Center will continue.

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The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. A highlight of my trip to the Kennedy Space Center last week came, after a second scrub, on the evening of Wednesday, November 3rd, when media representatives were loaded onto buses for a four-mile trip to Pad 39. What a magnificent sight.

We are maybe a quarter mile short of the pad as the rotating service structure is not yet being rotated away. But out here are a couple of hundred members of the media, all lined up behind a line in the sand, essentially, or a line in the grass, standing over the rock bed, maybe you can hear this, that the crawler, the transporter, crawls on when it brings the shuttle out to the pad. And it is a spectacular night, and we're just waiting any moment, though, for NASA to declare a phase two, which means that any one of us could get killed by lightning. And then we're all supposed to run back to the bus, the survivors. I introduced myself to Bobby D. Parker, a photographer for a small Colorado newspaper

who has almost made a fourth or fifth career out of documenting shuttle launches. You say this is your tenth launch? This is my tenth launch. And I could tell. You've got a hat covered with pins. You've got patches. The fellow that owns this newspaper, he used to do a lot of my stories back in Wellington, Kansas, when I taught vocal music. And he moved to Colorado and bought some newspapers, and now his son's taking over, so they called me and asked me if I wouldn't like to cover some of this shuttle business for them.

I told them yes. Did you just get hooked on it or what? Yes, I did. I used to work at Boeing Aircraft Company in the late 50s and built B-47s and B-52s. And I was in the Air Force at McConnell Air Force Base in Wichita. What is the thrill? I mean, why do this ten times? Well, I like all kinds of photography, and watching these shuttles go up.

Now, I wouldn't go if they called me tomorrow, but as far as watching them and photographing them, there's nothing like it, I tell you. I'll take your seat. And I've got three cameras, remote cameras, sitting over there, ready to go. Now, what do you mean by remote cameras? Well, you set cameras, they take us out the day before the launch and let us set cameras up, strap them to the ground tight, put sound triggers on them, and there you go. You've gotten good shots that way?

I sure have. In fact, when we get down here, I'll show you a picture. Any thoughts about this being the last time you're going to see this particular shuttle, Discovery launch? Discovery means a lot to me because the first launch that I saw was Discovery, and it was after Challenger's accident that I came down here on September 29, 1988, and photographed that shuttle going up. Thank you very much, Matthew. The Thursday launch was scrubbed due to bad weather. Finally, it was Friday, November 5.

A beautiful, clear day dawned over the Kennedy Space Center. The Thursday launch was scrubbed due to bad weather. Finally, it was Friday, November 5th. A beautiful, clear day dawned over the Kennedy Space Center. Everything was go for launch until a serious hydrogen leak was discovered. Scrubbed again, along with my chance to see the liftoff. As we waited for the last media briefing, I knocked on the door of a building with a big CBS News sign and a picture window looking out from a TV studio toward Discovery on the pad. The door was opened by special event producer Mark Kramer. I grew up on Walter doing his thing here. This piece of dirt that this building sits on is the same piece of dirt that that original building sat on.

In those days, in the late 60s, NASA said you could only use frame construction. The idea was if they had to make this building disappear for some reason, they wanted to be able to bulldoze it away in 24 hours or 48 hours. So that was what we had to build. The termites got to it after 20 years. A termite, not even a hurricane? Termites? It was two things. The building was designed to last through the Apollo program. It lasted until 1988. So we got an extra 16 years out of it. The termites ate at it. A little tornado came through here and pulled the front of the building off, and the glass shattered, and we just said, let's demolish this.

So we built this real building. This went up in 1988. We've used it a zillion times. My friends from ABC News looked at it and said, are you crazy spending that money? And I said, this is going to pay off. So here we are in 2010. We're still in this building. It's a good facility. And it has a lot of history, too, of course, because it is in the same volume that Walter Cronkite worked in. I worked with Cronkite on the Apollo program. So I've been coming here since 1968. That was my next question. So you're a vet.

I saw all the Apollo launches except Apollo 7, but all the Saturn V launches, and I covered Apollo-Soyuz, and I've covered all the shuttle program. This will be my, when they launch this, this will be my 80th shuttle launch that I've seen. And each one is still thrilling, heart-stopping, breathtaking. And it's a lot of fun. I'm retired now, but I still do this because CBS News doesn't have anyone else to send down here. So it's a great gig. So you live in the area? No, I live in New York.

I come down here for all the launches and landings. The part that disturbs me the most is that not everyone knows what a great story it is. And a lot of people think it's a Mack truck going in orbit around the Earth. But that's a Mack truck that takes off. It's 4.5 million pounds, and in 10 seconds, it's going 100 miles an hour straight up. That's like taking a World War II destroyer, something that size, and accelerating it to 100 miles an hour straight up in 10 seconds. It's pretty impressive.

The Post Scrub Press Conference featured Mike Moses, chair of the mission management team that called for the scrubs, and Mike Leinbach, the Space Shuttle launch director. Mike Moses speaks first. There's a little bit of just annoyance that here we go again, but from a team's perspective as to the shuttle and the problem out there, to a T, everybody reacted exactly the way they do all the time, which is, hey, this is a problem. We're going to go fix this. We're going to figure out what's wrong.

The engineering team was immediately on top of what did we do, what did we do different, pull all the paper, make sure we look at our processes. Let's look at the job we did. What could we have done? What could we have missed? And like I said, before Mike even got up there to talk schedules with them, I think they had a plan to go out and be ready to tear the thing apart as fast as they could. So they're all responding exactly as professionally and as perfectly as I could ever ask for. I might add a little bit to that. When I went down to the control room and announced to the team that we were not going to try for the Monday slot

and do our due diligence on this issue and take it apart slowly and really understand the problem, I probably had six or seven people actually physically come up to me and pat me on the back saying, good decision, because we want to do the right thing for this vehicle. We were presenting an option to the program that might have gotten to Monday, but we all know in our hearts the right thing to do is to take this slowly, understand this issue, go fix it. And so they were, to a person, glad that we made the right decision. How do you capture the knowledge that you gain from dealing with problems like these,

particularly if they reveal something unexpected, for programs that are going to follow the shuttle? Well, part of it we capture in our PRACA database, Problem Reporting and Corrective Action System. And so that system has been with us since STS-1. It's a very, very mature system. We talked about it a little bit in a previous press conference. We'll make that available to any program that wants it. The people themselves carry a lot of knowledge in their head. We're going through an effort here at KSC and at the other centers to try to capture that knowledge,

write down our histories, our experiences, and capture that somehow. But the hardware is captured in that PRACA database, and that's available to anybody. My last stop before leaving the Kennedy Space Center was for a talk with NASA spokesperson Allard Buttrell. He had just moderated the press conference with Mike Moses and Mike Leinbach. Yeah, I know. I'm feeling like a real heel. You're the guy who gave us the bad news. Yes, I did. Yeah, that was me. Often, if you're going to have a problem, it's going to be during tanking, because if you can get through that, you've gone through these, you know, these super cold propellants and everything that reacts to those propellants, you're sort of, okay,

you've gotten a pretty decent, you've gotten through a major hurdle in the sense of a major milestone through the countdown. We obviously didn't get that through, you've gotten a pretty decent, you've gotten through a major hurdle in the sense of a major milestone through the countdown. We obviously didn't get through that hurdle today, but it's okay. I mean, you catch it. It was a very easy decision to stop the countdown, drain the tank, and then try to see what we can do to fix it. It's a complex system, which is probably the understatement of the year. More than 2 million parts between all the shuttles and tank and solid rocket boosters and they work each subsystem and then you have the subsystem working with sub

subsystems and you pull it all together and you know it's a minor miracle. I guess you get it you know and but today was not one of those days we're gonna have that. Do you get used to it, these scrubs? If the hardware's not ready to go, the hardware's not ready to go and you can't push it. If the weather's bad, the weather's bad. There's just some things that you just get out of your control, and this is one of those times everything looked okay, and then when you got to a certain point in the countdown and in the fueling process, it wasn't okay. It becomes a no-brainer.

You stop and stand down because if you can't safely do your mission, there's no point in doing the mission. So it becomes an easy call. But, yeah, of course, I'd much rather be out there telling you, hey, we're getting close to countdown and the crews, you know, getting ready to board and all that. But that was not today. So we'll get another chance at it.

You like your job? Love my job. It's the best job on the planet. The astronauts really have the best job because they're off the planet. Okay, so they got the best in the universe. I think so. Yeah, I think so. They get the best job in the universe.

They actually get to go up there. I get to talk about them, which is pretty cool. NASA spokesperson Allard Buttrell. Can't deny it, I was disappointed by last week's outcome, but I can't say I regret my visit to the Kennedy Space Center. Not when so many of my most treasured memories started with a countdown on that piece of beachfront federal property. I hope to make it back someday soon.

The next launch window is November 30. Godspeed. to make it back someday soon. The next launch window is November 30. Godspeed. You can read archived blog entries and see pictures of my trip at planetary.org slash blog. Bruce Betts is on the Skype connection. He is the director of projects for the Planetary Society.

Because we're not doing this in person, I can't give you your present that I picked up at the Kennedy Space Center. Maybe next week. I hope I can see you face to face. You got me a present? Yeah, you know, just as good as the ones I usually get you. Oh, thank you. So what's up? Wait, I'm sorry. It's only as good as the ones you usually get me? Yeah, afraid so. Oh, all right. Well, there's still the sky. Jupiter, of course, dominating the evening sky high in the southeast. After sunset, if you've got a really clear shot to the western horizon, just after sunset, you may have to even pull out the binoculars,

and you can try to find Mars and Mercury. Mars being very dim and reddish, Mercury a little brighter and whitish, but both very low over there in the west after sunset. In the pre-dawn, starting to get extremely bright Venus popping up again. And Saturn, high above that, looking kind of yellowish. We also have the peak of the Leonid meteor shower, which can be inspirational roughly every 30, 33 years.

Not this year, probably. So that's November 17th. There's also a moon up. So if you're hardcore, go check it out. Otherwise, probably wait for the Geminids in December. On to this week in space history. All sorts of good stuff this week. Carl Sagan, born this week in 1934.

Yay. Yeah, you got that right. And 1980, so 30th anniversary of Voyager 1 flying by Saturn. And also in 1971, Mariner 9 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit Mars. And now we go on to, wait, do we have anyone more or am I actually doing it again? You know what? Yes, we actually have a wonderful random space fact submission from a listener, but it's quite a production. You'll be very impressed, but we don't have time for it this week.

So everything next week is just going to be bigger than life. And this week, smaller. Yeah, a little tiny. Right. So I guess it's up to me to be small. Please. Random space fact. Rather cute.

Cute. Not a word I've attached to a random space fact before. But do you have a cute fact for us? I don't think it's particularly cute, but it's interesting. We just passed the 10th anniversary of continuous operation on the International Space Station, continuous occupation by humans. That eclipsed a few days before the record that had been held by the Mir space station. More than 196 people have visited the International Space Station. In the 10 years since the Expedition 1 crew started living there, of course, then they

came down and others went up. The station completed some 1.5 billion miles of travel. Wow, that's great. Just imagine if it had actually gone somewhere other than in circles. It could have gone all kinds of places and come back in that time. The good news is they'll be able to use the frequent flyer miles. That's good. To Mars, I hope. So, switching planets, we move on

to the trivia contest, and we asked you what will be the next spacecraft to the Jupiter system, if all goes well. How'd we do, Matt? Lots and lots of entries once again this week because a whole lot of people wanted to get another shot at getting Wonders of the Solar System, presented by Professor Brian Cox, brought to us by the BBC, which made these available to us. Our winner is Stephen Coulter.

Stephen Coulter in Woodville, South Australia, who said next mission to Jupiter is NASA's Juno, planned to launch only about nine months from now, August 2011, getting to Jupiter about five years later. Yes, a five-year mission. We're going to send Stephen that DVD set, three DVD set. I do want to mention a couple of other things that we got. Torsten Zimmer in Germany, who can always be counted on for something like this, said, let's not forget that all these worlds Jupiter and all its moons are ours except Europa and we should attempt no landing there I've heard that somewhere to which I I wanted to reply you know bite me Dave moment you big baby just continuing the the obscure movie references. Nicely done.

So let's move on. What's the next one? All right. Back to that International Space Station. Who was that first crew to stay on board the International Space Station known as Expedition 1? Who were the members of Expedition 1? Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter.

What are we giving away this week, Matt? Oh, yeah. Let's give away, because I have another copy, a copy of Packing for Mars from Mary Roach. Remember that terrific book about humans in space and how sometimes difficult and embarrassing that is? Packing for Mars from Mary Roach goes to the person who can tell us those names and get them to us by November 15. That'll be Monday at 2 p.m. November 15, 2 p.m. Pacific time, in case anyone was wondering. And would that be Pacific Standard Time? Yes, it will be now.

Now that I'm four hours jet-lagged instead of just three. Ah, you big baby. Oh, wait. Not as big as him. Yeah, exactly. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about reflections in a spoon. Thank you, and good night.

Ooh, that was an M.C. Escher painting, wasn't it? He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week here for What's Up. 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.