Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Sweet Sound of Success...The Huygens Probe on Titan

Episode Date: January 17, 2005

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Titan welcomes humanity and imagining Saturn this week on Planetary Radio. Music That was the sound of a bunch of old world Europeans reacting to one of the greatest space exploration successes in history. Welcome to our special coverage of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan. I'm Matt Kaplan. We're going to dispense with space headlines today so that we'll have more time to recap this extraordinary accomplishment. You won't hear Emily Lakdawalla's Q&A segment either,

but you will hear Emily reporting from the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany. Later in the show, we'll get reactions from Bill Nye the Science Guy, former NASA Associate Administrator Wes Huntress, actor and space enthusiast John Rhys-Davies, and others. But the real star is the Huygens probe itself. And here it is. We take you back to Friday, January 14. What you're about to hear is the actual sound

of a two-and-a-half-hour descent through the thick atmosphere of Titan compressed into 10 seconds. Did you notice how it got much quieter at the end? Huygens had plopped down onto the surface of Titan, where it would spend far more time returning data than anyone had expected or even hoped. You can hear much more sound from the probe's microphone at the Planetary Society website, planetary.org. The Society had partnered with the European Space Agency to process and publish these audio portraits from the only moon in our solar system with a substantial atmosphere.

We've also posted a tremendous amount of information about Titan, Saturn, Cassini, and Huygens, including many of the 350 images returned by the probe. There would have been about twice as many images if there hadn't been a problem with one of the communication channels between Huygens and the Saturn-orbiting Cassini. But that bad news was far outweighed by the hours of scientific data received and the sheer wonder of this tiny man-made object speaking to us from the outer solar system. David Southwood heads the European Space Agency's Science Directorate. He spoke as that data was still flowing to Earth across a billion miles of space.

Now the scientists start work. The torch has been passed to the scientists. But in fact, this data is data for posterity. This is a historic event. I don't think it's likely in the lifetime of anyone else, anyone in this room, that we will repeat a landing on Titan. It's for posterity. It's for mankind. But it's got to be unraveled. It's got to be put together, and then scientists, being scientists, are going to argue about what it means as we piece together our place in the universe and how we came to be.

This is only the beginning. Have you seen the pictures? The first handful arrived shortly after the recorded signal from Huygens began to reach Earth from Cassini. Marty Tomasco is principal investigator for the Huygens Descent Imager slash Spectral Radiometer. He describes two of these brand new and still unprocessed images. And for the first time we can see some of the features that we've been expecting to see and hoping to see on Titan for a long time, but have been very frustrated

by the views from the orbiter that have a resolution of a kilometer. So here instead of a kilometer we have like 40, 50 meters. We have 20 times better resolution than we have seen from orbit. And finally we have enough resolution to see clearly these darker what seem to be drainage channels.

They don't quite have the right structure for rain drainage on the earth. There may be box canyons. There may be some seepage out of the walls of these canyons as there is in the western United States, for example. And along the right side of the image, we seem to have a shoreline, perhaps with a few islands in it or something of that sort. In any case, it's the first picture that's been clear enough and sharp enough for the

geologists on the various science teams to actually sink their teeth into and begin to try to understand the features in a way that we just couldn't quite do from orbit. So they're very excited about it, and we're very excited about this picture and the others that we have as well. And from the surface? It looks like rocks. We think probably they're not silicate rocks like you have on Mars or like you'd have on the Earth. They may well be large ice boulders, large blocks of water ice that is frozen hard as rock on Mars and may be subjected to the same kinds of erosional forces

or wind erosions or motions in landslides and things that objects on the Earth are. I was struck by how similar this landscape looks to what we might see on the Earth, what we've seen on Mars, what we've seen on a variety of planets, that even though Titan is so different, so cold, so far away,

so shrouded in this veil of mystery, that when you tear it away, the same physical processes are occurring there as they've occurred in other places, and we may really be able to understand it very much better by these images. You can almost imagine yourself standing on the surface and looking out and surveying such a scene. Cassini project manager Dennis Mattson was one of many American team members who joined the party in Germany. The Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla asked him to talk about how the wealth of images and other data from Huygens

will complement Cassini's investigation of Titan from space. investigation of Titan from space. Huygens will provide an in-depth analysis of a profile through the atmosphere at one point on Titan at one time. It will provide a way to cross-reference and cross-calibrate measurements made by the orbiter of the surface and the atmosphere. Later on, the orbiter will measure other places on Titan and extend what we've learned from Huygens to a global coverage of Titan. And over time, we will see how things evolve in terms of weather and climate on Titan.

Emily got to talk with David Southwood just a few moments later. What do you think that this success means for ESA, even this far, the engineering success? It should wipe away any doubts that we're not a world player. Somehow, it's taken a while before Europe has understood it's got a real space agency. The world interest we've got here shows that we can do it. And, you know, it's not the ordinary people. It's the political leaders who have to understand that we've got the capability. We're not in competition with Uncle Sam, but we've worked closely with America on this one.

And it's been a wonderful partnership. It's great to deliver, or to start delivering, please, I'd be careful, start delivering from our side. It was, you know, I tell you, I was present at the meeting that selected Huygens back in, I think, 1988. There was skepticism that this was too challenging. I thought, what the hell, we surely can do it. I just don't think, if we don't set our mind to it, that we can't do it. So far, I'm right. Big accomplishments require big visions, I think.

Indeed. If you don't ask, you don't get. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. There's some clichés for you. Right. The Planetary Society congratulates you, and our members thank you for letting us ride along and see this adventure.

Thanks very much to the Planetary Society. We need more of you. I talk with an exhausted but excited Emily Lakdawalla early on Sunday morning, January 15. Emily, I know it's been a long weekend there, and you are under the weather, so we won't keep you long. Just give us some idea of what it's been like to share this with everybody there at the European Space Agency.

Well, it's been pretty incredible. This is the first time that the Europeans have put on a show of this magnitude for the world. I mean, they've had a couple of recent successes. They had Mars Express getting to Mars and Smart One getting to the moon. But there's nothing like a landing to capture people's imaginations. And so they had three or four times as many people here as they've ever had to deal with before from all over the world just wanting to wait and watch with ESA as Huygens descended to Titan. It was really pretty incredible, the energy that was here, sort of wishing and hoping for Huygens' success.

So were you standing amidst this crowd when the first data started to flow in from Huygens? Yeah, I was with a crowd of reporters and journalists and Cassini scientists. There's a number of them here. And bureaucrats and people and guests and all sorts of people were here to watch. It was really quite a celebration when we found out that Huygens data was starting to return. I don't know if this is a fair question, but where are we in terms of science results, in terms of analyzing this data and images that are coming back? Well, David Southwood keeps on trying to force everybody to let the scientists have some time. And the fact of the matter is

that this mission lasted only two and a half hours. And I think that that's what gives people the impression that they should be able to have science results at about the same time. But this is a data set that's going to be mined for years. And part of its value is going to come out when it's used to ground truth the Cassini data. Cassini is going to be flying over the Huygens landing site several times in its mission. We'll be able to compare measurements taken from orbit with measurements taken on the ground, like they've done with, say, Apollo on the moon and with the Mars landers and the Mars orbiters. It really strengthens your ability to do science on a planet

if you can both do orbital science and landed science. So much more to come from Huygens, even though its batteries are now dead and gone. Yes. Well, thank you very much for spending the time with us, especially not feeling that well. And thank you also for all the great material that you've been posting at planetary.org, including your weblog or blog.

Well, thanks, everybody, for reading. And I've been enjoying the fan mail that's been pouring in. And we'll look forward to hearing you on Q&A again next week. All right. Thanks, Matt. Again, there's much more about the successful Huygens mission to Titan at planetary.org. When we come back, you'll get the chance to let your mind run wild with Bill Nye the Science Guy and others as we consider Saturn in the human imagination. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system.

That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds. And we're building the first-ever solar sail. the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first ever solar sail. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration

in The Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, planetarysociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds.

Our special edition of Planetary Radio continues. I'm Matt Kaplan. Just hours before the Huygens probe screamed into the atmosphere of Titan, Our special edition of Planetary Radio continues. I'm Matt Kaplan. Just hours before the Huygens probe screamed into the atmosphere of Titan, about 500 people gathered at the Hilton Hotel in Pasadena, California, to celebrate what they did not yet know would be a tremendous success. A distinguished lineup of scientists and engineers presented a fascinating examination of this mission and humankind's other recent investigations of Saturn and its mysterious moon. Then a different sort of panel took the stage.

Our own Bruce Betts, the Planetary Society's Director of Projects, led a discussion titled Saturn in the Imagination. You can hear the entire hour-long presentation at planetary.org. We'll just present a few excerpts, beginning with these observations by Bill Nye the Science Guy. So the second thing I saw through a telescope was Saturn. The first thing was the moon. My father, who was quite the amateur astronomer, who spent quite a bit of time in the dark. No, it was not his idea.

He was in prison camp, and they had dark skies, and he was very good with constellations, and he assured me that these are rings. But when you first look at Saturn, you go, hold it. Did you put a slide in the end of the telescope? And if I had a nickel, as they say, I'd have about five bucks for the number of times people have looked through my telescopes and thought that Saturn was not real, that it was not a real image. But it is, apparently. And the first guy to see it was

only four centuries ago. And you think about how long humans have been running around on the Earth. No one even knew that Saturn was there. And when you think of planets, you really think of Saturn. And it just makes me wonder what somebody four centuries from now will think of us. You know, those clowns,

they didn't even know about envisions or whatever, you know, let alone dark energy. And they thought that sound on Titan was just the atmosphere. Oh! And so I'm very hopeful that this mission, the Cassini and Huygens, will somehow inspire us to understand the universe in a new way and maybe, dare I say it, change the world. And I'm honored to be here with you.

Recent Planetary Radio guest Wes Huntress was also on the panel that night. The former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science now directs the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Lab and serves as President of the Planetary Society. Humans are very good at imagining things, but nature is always showing us how humble we are. Because throughout the whole last age of space exploration, nature has shown us that she can produce worlds beyond our imagination.

And we'll go to a place, and I remember Venus. Venus and Titan are the only two completely cloud-enshrouded planets in the solar system. And before we unveiled Venus, we had all these wild ideas about what it would be like. It's going to be like a jungle. It's going to be like the Amazon. Or it was going to be, no, it's going to be dry. It's close to the sun. It's too hot. It's going to be, no, it's going to be dry, it's close to the sun, it's too hot, it's going to be like the Sahara. Turned out to be nothing like that whatsoever. It turned out

to be completely different. So we know a little bit about this other cloud-enshrouded body in the solar system, Titan, but we should all be prepared that it might turn out completely different than what we expected, and that's just as exciting. Andre Bourmanis is probably the only successful science writer and astronomer who also serves as co-producer of a network TV series. Of course, the TV series is Star Trek Enterprise. In the last 10 or 15 years, we've also learned that life can thrive in extraordinarily unlikely

places. In these deep volcanic vents down at the bottom of the ocean in Antarctica, the San Fernando Valley. Places where you would never expect life to be able to thrive in such hostile conditions. And we've learned that...

But we're just talking about basic life, primitive life. That's right, yes. Yeah, you know, bigger than a microbe. But at any rate, the fact that Titan has an atmosphere somewhat denser than Earth's, that it is rich in organic compounds, methane, as Wes mentioned,

and probably more complex hydrocarbons, that there are probably lakes of, or potentially lakes of liquid ethane and other chemicals on the surface of Titan, it's extraordinarily exciting. I'm hoping that we'll see the Loch Titan monster in tomorrow morning's descent imagery. I mean, maybe I'm not counting on it, but... Stay tuned. And maybe our microphone may be picking up more than just hissing from the wind.

Maybe we'll hear a little bit, puny earthlings, your species has no strength against it. Who knows? I mean, that's the excitement, right? Did I mention Andre also writes for Star Trek? We'll stay in the Star Trek universe with Bob Picardo. He played the nameless and sometimes cranky emergency medical hologram in Star Trek Voyager, but has enjoyed a rich range of roles on other shows, in movies, and on stage. I think I'm the only one on the panel who's actually flown by Saturn. I had the pleasure in 97 of visiting JPL and seeing the Cassini orbiter while it was under construction.

Obviously, I was on the other side of the clean room window. But it's very exciting to me to think that I saw it over in La Cunada, and now it's up there. And we're at this moment in the mission that is so exciting. And I'm also proud to be part of the Planetary Society that schedules events like this. At the most exciting moments in space exploration. I'm not a football fan, so I don't get to go to tailgate parties. But this is a tailgate party for space exploration. I'm not a football fan, so I don't get to go to tailgate parties, but this is a tailgate party for space exploration, and you are space exploration party animals. Bill Nye told me earlier that chicks love Saturn.

And I was thinking, why? Is it the big ring? Is it the fact that it's made a commitment to some other planet? Bob Picardo was followed by another actor who straddles art and science. You may know him best as Gimli the Dwarf in The Lord of the Rings, but John Rhys-Davies has stature, fame, and intellect that far exceed that feisty little character. And there again you have the damn problem, you know. How much can you hear of her when she talks to you in the vacuum of space? And how much heat is actually going to be pushed out there to keep my aged body warm?

to keep my aged body warm. The extraordinary thing about an evening like this is there are all you very smart people here celebrating something that is unique in the history of mankind. And yet the rest of mankind doesn't celebrate it at all. The paradox that we have lost darkness means that we no longer look at the stars with our naked eyes. Those of us who've been brought up in Africa and places like that and actually see the night skies and just see the, I mean, the dust of galaxies see the dust of galaxies just liberally distributed in the sky, still have some memory of that distant sense of awe that must have impelled our forefathers, who spent at least half of

their lives in the darkness. And our paradox is that with more light, we have more inward light, if you like, more spiritual light, more knowledge. And yet we seem to have lost the sense of the miraculous. Or for most people, the sense of the miraculous is lost. Yes, I would give you a ring greater than Saturn's to express my love. But we have to see it first. And I do hope that there are some people in this room who will actually get, like my friend Robert here,

to see Saturn's rings very close up. Excerpts from Saturn in the Imagination, a panel discussion sponsored by the Planetary Society, on the evening before the Huygens probe made history on Titan. Again, you can hear the entire recording at planetary.org. I'll be right back with Bruce Betts and What's Up. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio with Dr. Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society.

And Bruce, it has been a heck of a week for planetary exploration. It sure has, Matt. Hey, happy Huygens. Happy Huygens to you. It's been a titanic week, and that's not meant as a tease for next week's show with James Cameron, but what the heck. Well, yes, and it's been a week that's had and that's not meant as a tease for next week's show with James Cameron, but what the heck. Well, yes, and it's been a week that's had a deep impact on all of us, and that wasn't meant as a tease for last week's show about the Deep Impact Mission, which successfully launched this last week.

What have you got for us? I guess Huygens, right? Huygens, Huygens, and more Huygens. Let's replay that sound, the ten-second compression of the two and a half hours of descent? Did I get that right? You sure did. Well, here it is. Wow. It's amazing if you think about it. Whatever the sound sounds like, it's the first time we've ever heard real sound from a billion miles away. I find that slightly profound. And much more on our website, right? Oh, much more on our website.

The Planetary Society has been working with the HAASI team, the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument, on Huygens. And they've provided the data from their acoustic sensor, something like a microphone. And we've been working with Greg Delorey at UC Berkeley, the builder of the Mars microphone that we sponsored on the failed Mars Polar Lander, and producing sounds. That's really what I'm getting to. And so on our website, planetary.org slash sounds, you can find the latest. And we're going to keep releasing over the next few days, perhaps weeks, new looks at this sound data, because it's not just like your ear and brain going down. They had so little

data that they could use for this and trying to transmit back to Cassini that basically they averaged sound data every two seconds, and they only took a few frequencies. And so what we're trying to do is expand it back as close as we can to what you would hear with human ear. And what you heard is, of course, a compression of three hours, almost three hours, into ten minutes. But the frequencies are not changed. And so what you're really hearing is that coming through the atmosphere, the atmospheric wind, and then suddenly it gets quiet. Cool stuff.

Fascinating stuff. What else have you got for us? We'll make this a quick one. Well, go out there in the night sky, and I'd say the first thing you should look for is Saturn and pay homage to Cassini and Huygens. And you can see Saturn in the evening sky rising right around sunset. Midnight, it'll be directly overhead, and it is near Castor and Pollux, the two bright stars. Saturn's a little brighter and looks a little yellowish. Good way to pick it out. If you have a small telescope, take a look. You'll not only see the rings, but depending on the night you view, you have a good chance you might see Titan itself appearing as a little star-like dot in a small telescope.

So you can also see a ton of planets right before dawn. Here's a quick rundown. Five naked-eye planets going from the horizon up. They are in the order they are from the sun. Last time, that's going to happen for a few hundred years. So down low on the horizon in the east, you will see Mercury, Venus looking extremely bright, then Mars dim and red, and then Jupiter very, very bright. Whip your head around to the other side of the sky and pick up Saturn in the morning sky.

Cool stuff. Random Facebook! The Titan atmosphere is about one and a half times the pressure of Earth at the surface, but it is much, much higher than Earth's atmosphere. It is about seven times higher than Earth's atmosphere. The lowest clouds on Titan are higher in general than the highest clouds on Earth. It's really, really tall, partly due to low gravity allowing it to extend up. That's why they can float through the atmosphere for two and a half hours before they ever reach the surface.

A lot of gas. And speaking of a lot of gas, I don't know. Let's go on to our trivia contest. We asked you on the Mars Exploration Rovers, how many cameras or imagers were there on each of the rovers? How did we do, Matt? Well, the key here, folks, is that Bruce asked for how many imagers altogether, and a lot of people came up with eight. But the correct answer, I believe, Bruce, was nine,

and that's exactly what Paul Hoover said. Paul Hoover of Long Beach, California, my hometown. Not very far from me at all, I bet you. And Paul Hoover said, I believe each MER has nine different cameras slash imagers on board. Paul, you're right. You just won yourself a Planetary Radio t-shirt. That is right. Two panoramic cameras, two navigation cameras, those all on the mast, and then two hazard cameras low down in the front, two in the back, and the one people missed,

the microscopic imager, which is on the robotic arm. Well, Bruce, I guess you've got one for us next week, and then we'll get out of here. I do. For this coming week, following our Titan theme, tell me about its low gravity. What is the gravity on Titan's surface relative to what it is at the Earth's surface? And sort of approximately. We'll give you, you know, it's 2 or 3 percent error, but get it about right. What is the Titan gravity? Go to planetary.org

slash radio. Find out how to email your answer to us and try to win the fabulous Planetary Radio t-shirt, The Envy of the Solar System. And do that by the 24th. January 24th at noon Pacific time. Get those entries in to us. From among all the correct answers, we will pick the winner of next week's Planetary Radio t-shirt. Bruce, we're out of time.

All right, everyone. Please keep checking our website for more coverage of Huygens data that's coming out, hear more sounds, and everyone go out there, look up in the night sky, and think what it must be like to be chilling hard on the surface of Titan. Thank you, and good night. Cryogenically cool there. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society.

He joins us each week here on What's Up. Come on back next time when we'll return to our regular format, but with a very special guest. You could say we're going from Titan to Titanic. Film director turned undersea explorer James Cameron will be here to talk about his new IMAX 3D production, Aliens of the Deep. That deep includes the oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa. Have a great week, everyone.