Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Talking With the Top of the World: Stephen Grasby at the Europa Analog on Ellesmere Island

Episode Date: July 3, 2006

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A conversation with the top of the world, this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. I mentioned last week that we might soon get a call from very near the North Pole. Well, it happened just a few days ago. When I picked up the phone, it was Stephen Graspy on the line calling us via satellite phone from a glacier on Canada's Ellesmere Island, 81 degrees north. You'll hear our conversation about the remarkable sulfur-laden spring Stephen and his three colleagues are investigating,

the one that may make the site the closest thing around to the mottled ice on Jupiter's moon Europa. Of course, Bill Betts will be along soon with this week's edition of What's Up and another chance to win a Planetary Radio T-shirt. As we go to press, or wherever it is that radio shows go, NASA is preparing for a third attempt to launch Discovery on July 4th.

All systems were go, but that pesky Florida weather kept the shuttle on the pad last weekend. While America is trying to return humans to orbit for the first time in many months, we've also learned that Russia and Europe have decided to explore development of what is being called the Advanced Crew Transportation System. It centers on a small winged vehicle that might carry up to six people to the International Space Station. The craft is based on an earlier concept from the Russians called the Clipper. Want to see it? Check out the article and photos at planetary.org. Mars Exploration Rover Spirit may not be rolling around during the Martian winter,

but that isn't preventing her from making discoveries, including a couple of meteorites. On the other side of the red planet, Opportunity has gotten herself out of another sand trap. You can read a complete status report at planetary.org. That's also where you can watch a huge vortex swirling around Venus's south pole. The movie images were captured by the European Space Agency's Venus Express, now orbiting the second planet from the sun. How do we determine the age of a planet or moon's surface? I don't know about you, but Emily counts craters. I'll be right back with Stephen Graspy above the Arctic Circle. Bring a sweater.

Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, how do they know when things happened on Mars? On Earth and the Moon, we can use radiometric age dating on rock samples from known locations to determine absolute ages. But for all other places in the solar system, including Mars, dates are determined in a relative way, usually through crater counting. Crater counting depends on the assumption that the majority of impact craters that we can see from space resulted from a steady, uniform rate of impactors arriving from the asteroid belt. Surfaces with more craters must have been exposed to space for longer than surfaces with fewer craters. This is easy to spot on the Moon, whose ancient highlands are completely saturated with overlapping

impact craters. The lunar maria formed later, when lava flooded crater basins, so they are relatively smooth with few craters. Scientists have taken crater counts from the moon and matched them to the absolute dates measured from the Apollo samples to determine cratering rates for the whole inner solar system in order to derive ages for places on Mars. Unfortunately, Mars researchers have recently run into problems with trying to apply this technique to Mars' youngest features.

Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out why. It wasn't just any phone call I received last week. It was Stephen Graspi of the Geologic Survey of Canada. And he was standing on top of the world with a satellite telephone in his hand. We're going to let you listen in on the conversation pretty much as it happened, including dropouts and stretches that are not exactly broadcast quality.

In fact, some are almost unintelligible. But it isn't every day you get to talk with someone standing on a glacier just nine degrees away from the North Pole. And that glacier hosts a spring that turns the ice yellow with sulfur compounds, compounds that previous expeditions have found to be teeming with bacterial life. Is it an analog for the surface of Europa, where a layer of ice hides a vast, warm ocean? That's what everyone would like to know.

Hi, Matt. It's Steve Grasby calling from the Arctic. Hi, Steve. Thanks for calling. Yeah, no problem. You're on a satellite phone at about, what, 80 or 81 degrees north? Yeah, 81 degrees north, 81 west. I hardly know where to begin. How is the weather today? I hear you just about got rained out yesterday. Yeah, we had two days of straight rain, but today it's kind of broken overcast,

and we just have some sun right now. So it's nice to see the sun, but it's a little windy and cold still. And how have things looked up there? Are you finding lots of that yellow ice and snow? Yeah, it's quite a lot this year, much more than we've seen before. And we came earlier in the season to try and see if we see better flow from the spring, and it's really coming out good from the glacier. So we've got a much better view of water. You were cutting out a little bit there,

but it sounded like you've got a better view than last year, or a better view of the glacier, did you say? Of the spring discharge, because in the past we were later in the season, and spring water kind of comes out the base of the glacier. Right now the base of the glacier is frozen, so we're seeing it discharged off the top surface. And it's a very strong flow. So this is the sulfur-laden water coming from these springs that are apparently hidden deep under the ice? That's right. So there's a really strong smell of H10 gas in the air,

and there's a yellow sulfur element, sulfur all over the snow and ice. And the spring is actually, we discovered, it's fairly saline. It's about 10,000 milligrams per liter. It's about a third of seawater. And as in the past, are you finding that it is loaded with bacteria? Well, you can't really tell that until you get it back into the lab. So we've been busy collecting samples that we'll analyze. I should have realized, of course, you'd need to get those back to a lab and culture them. What other investigations are underway during this expedition?

Well, we've been also busy looking at the local geology to try and better understand the geology of the area that might be controlling the springs. We're discovering some very complex geology. It's a little more confusing than we thought, but we're getting a good understanding of it. And today we discovered what's probably an old spring site. So this is a site in the rocks where you can see what used to be a spring discharge. It was an exciting find because we're getting evidence that there's other sites in the past that used to be flowing. So there's a good deal that apparently we still don't understand about the geology of a site like this.

Yeah, this area was only really mapped mainly by air photos quite a while ago. We're really the first people to look at the geology in detail. Tell us a little bit about some of your companions on this four-person expedition in the summer of 2006. My doc, he's a geocast, essentially. Then, he's the director of the Arctic Institute of North America. And he's an expert on the geology of the Northern Arctic. He's worked here for about 25 years now.

Then we have Devnik Gleason. She's a graduate student who's looking at the Europa analog of the site. So she's been busy today taking spectral measurements of the snow and the sulfur compounds to see how that might relate to what's seen on Europa. And then we have another graduate student who's acting as a field assistant to help us all out, Mary of Caron. A little bit more about Dan McLeason's participation. Well, she's a graduate student, of course, or a postdoctoral student of Bob Pappalardo,

who was our guest on the program last week. And I guess she's up there with a handheld spectrometer. That's right. So we were out today. It was pretty heavy work to carry it from our camp over to the glacier. So she was really having her degree today. camp over to the glacier. So she was really getting her degree today.

But she managed to lug it over and she has got quite a good number of measurements and these will give a much better comparison to what we get for satellite measurements, which we're also scheduling to have. And then hopefully tomorrow we'll have a helicopter

come into the site and we'll do some aerial measurements as well, where she'll take some more spectral signatures of the sulfur glacier. Tell us a little bit more about the site itself and maybe about your living conditions up there, perhaps beginning with what the temperature is now. Well, it's been hovering from about zero to five degrees Celsius, so I haven't taken my duke off the whole time we've been here so far. So it's a little cool, but, you know, when the sun came out today,

so it was a nice relief to warm up a bit. So we're just having, you know, small tents. We have a little tent each and then a cooking area down the hill. We try and keep the food away in case bears tend to wander by or not. And then, yeah, so it's comfortable enough. We've been pretty wet the whole time we've been here, so everyone has wet seats and clothes, but you just have to keep moving to stay warm. So while this is basically a desert, you've said that you have to be a little bit wary

of bears, and there certainly is other wildlife there. You sighted an arctic fox a day or two ago. Yeah, that's right. We've had an arctic fox we saw. Well, just today, Benoit had a lemming trying to crawl into a sleeping bag. So there's a few other smaller ones and lots of birds we've seen. But no other animals so far. We've seen some skeletons of caribou and things like that,

so we know they're around in some tracks. Speaking of life at the site, if we go back, even if you can't confirm the presence of bacteria yet for this expedition, not until you're back in the lab, you've certainly found plenty of evidence on previous trips. Well, that's right, and we did see some stuff in the spring that looked like a filamentous bacteria. So we have seen some evidence that you could see visually. But we haven't, yeah, until we get the lab work, you can't see the microscopic stuff.

So we're just collecting all the samples we can from various sites, and hopefully we'll get a good analysis. And the one thing that's encouraging is that the water is a much higher concentration than what we've seen before. And I think later in the summer when the glaciers start melting, it dilutes the spring waters, and you're getting more melt water than you are spring water. And now I think what we're sampling is more spring water than melt water. So hopefully we'll have a much stronger concentration than previously.

I'm afraid that we may have lost the satellite connection. Oh, you're back. Hi. Must have switched satellites there. We thought we lost you for a few seconds. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. So this was a good time of year to be up there.

Apparently you're seeing a higher proportion of spring water to meltwater. That's right, and we're seeing a lot of evidence that leads us to believe it could very well run through the winter. So now we're starting to hesitantly plan an idea of coming in here in April sometime to see if we can see it flowing earlier in the year. That would, I assume, be a much less pleasant time to be up that far north. Yeah, it would be. It's fun to have even warmer clothes then. I'll be back with Stephen Graspi on Canada's Ellesmere Island in just a minute.

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. We didn't just build it. We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in depth

at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org. You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report. It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more? Call us at 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Let's hear the remainder of my recent conversation with Stephen Graspi of the Geologic Survey of Canada.

Remember that Stephen is speaking via less-than-perfect satellite connection from a glacier on Ellesmere Island, far above the Arctic Circle. I was also hoping to talk to one of Stephen's colleagues on the ice. Is Damnet Gleason anywhere nearby? No, she's not right now. She's just trying to recharge her thermos down the hill. Oh, I see. We have a generator running.

Well, let me talk to you then a little bit more about this idea of this site as an analog for Europa. I guess you kind of stumbled onto that reading a Scientific American article back in 1999. Well, that's right. I mean, I had been introduced to the site by Benoit Beauchamp, and then it was quite an exciting sight on its own to see the sulfur coming on the ice. And then I was reading an article written by Bob Papalotto in Scientific America and discussing the sulfur compounds on Europa. And, you know, I sort of put two and two together and sent him photos of the site

and said, well, if you want to, here's a great spot. So it's kind of spun from there. This has been investigated, I guess, ever since then. You've had this thought that this may be about as close as we can come on our planet to that moon that we may not get to visit for quite a while. That's right. I mean, as far as I know, this is the only system that's known of where you're getting these sulfur springs coming out onto a glacier,

and it makes a terrific analog for what's observed on Europa. So this is our first step to try and better understand it. You've talked already about a possible April expedition. What else would you like to accomplish at this site on Ellesmere Island? Hello? Stephen? Well, we'll give it another second here, see if he pops back in. No, I think we've lost him.

Ah, but my phone rang again just moments later. Hello? Hey, thanks for calling back. These satellite phones are not quite as reliable as you might hope, but then I guess you can't ask for too much from as close as you are to the North Pole. Oh, it's remarkable that we can even do this. Listen, what I was starting to ask you is, you've already mentioned that you're interested in an April expedition,

see if the springs are flowing during that much colder time. What else would you like to see accomplished at this site? We're still trying to better understand the geology, I think to see if there's other spring discharge sites that we can find. We're finding a number of faults parallel to the ones the spring has done. We want to see if we can maybe find some other sites. And even working in some different parts of the Arctic here to see if we can maybe find some other sites. And even working in some different parts of the Arctic here to see if we can find some maybe other potential analogs that might be similar or that we can use as a comparison.

Are there any? I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, I was just saying, in terms of coming in April, really the sole goal there would just be to see if we can see it flowing in the cold winter. We've only got a couple of minutes left, and then we'll let you get on about your business up there. But are there any sites that have been found anywhere, either in the far north or the far south, that are anything like this site? I know. I've looked around, and I've asked lots of people, and no one has anything that looks like this.

So as far as we know, this is unique. But you need to say that because someone will come out of the closet and prove you wrong. But I would love to know if there's another one. Stephen, we know that this particular expedition is supported in part by the Planetary Society, but as we've mentioned, you're with the Geologic Survey of Canada. Does the Geologic Survey, is this a priority for your organization as well? No, not the astrobiology aspects of things, but our organization has worked in the high Arctic for 40, 50 years now

to understand the geology and to map it and to look partly for oil and gas potential. So looking at future energy resources for North America as supplies dwindle. So what time is it up there right now? What time? Yeah. Oh, it's 9.30 at night. It's bright sunshine. Which you'll have all night, I assume.

Oh, that's right, yeah. So you sort of nap through the night because you keep on waking up to the bright sun. How many more days do you hope to get up there on the ice on Ellesmere during this trip? I know you were hoping for about a 10-day expedition. Yeah, our plan is to be here until July 6th. And then we'll start our way back. It will take about another three days to get back home from here, so it's a bit of traveling. That's quite a trip, isn't it?

I think there were like five legs just getting there from Ottawa? Yeah, well, we started at Calvary, to Ottawa, at Calouet, Resolute, and then we flew to the end of the valley where we landed on the tundra, or really on a river bank, and the Twin Otters just have to land on the gravel rocks of the valley where we landed on the tundra, or really on a riverbank. And the Twin Otters just had to land on the gravel rocks of the river, and then a helicopter came and took us the rest of the way in. So it's quite a journey. Well, considering all that trouble, can you imagine anywhere else you'd rather be in the world right now?

Well, no. I mean, the view I'm seeing is just spectacular. So there's big mountains and huge glaciers coming down the valley. So it's hard to, you know, we're just lucky to be here. Well, I wish I was there to share it with you. We will let everyone know once again that they can read about your journey, your expedition, at planetary.org and get daily updates if the journey is still underway as people hear this show from the blog run by my colleague, Emily Lakdawalla.

Thanks very much, Stephen, for taking a few moments on the satellite phone to talk to us and for leading this expedition. No problem. Thanks. Stephen Graspi is... I'm sorry. Go ahead. Oh, no. Just bye. Bye-bye. Have a great time, and please say hello to your colleagues up there. All right. Well, thanks.

Stephen Graspy of the Geologic Survey of Canada speaking to us from awfully close to the North Pole, up on Ellesmere Island, about as far north in Canada as you can get, from this site where a sulfur spring is discharging from deep under a glacier, from this site where a sulfur spring is discharging from deep under a glacier, spewing out all kinds of compounds, including sulfur, and very likely big colonies of bacteria. Speaking of Emily Lakdawalla, we're bringing her back right now for the second half of this week's Q&A segment, after which it's Bruce Betts for this week's edition of What's Up.

I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Crater counting has been very successful in determining the ages of the surfaces of the Moon, Mars, and Mercury. But Mars researchers are having trouble using crater counting on Mars' youngest features. The youngest features have the fewest craters. So scientists have tried to compensate by using higher-resolution images, which can show more, smaller craters for counting. The problem is that every single asteroid impact tosses out a great spray of ejecta, some of which consists of quite large boulders. When these boulders.

When these boulders inevitably return to the ground, they create small secondary craters. Some scientists argue that just one 10-kilometer impact crater could create millions of 10-meter secondary craters, which would have a non-uniform distribution. If true, this could mess up the whole timescale. Fortunately, the new generation of sharp-eyed spacecraft will provide a test of this idea. If our accepted timescales are correct, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, due to launch in 2008, should spot 50 small primary craters that have formed in the 40 years

since the Apollo missions caught the last close-up views. Got a question about the universe? Send it to us at planetaryradio at planetary.org. And now here's Matt with more Planetary Radio. Time for What's Up with Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week to tell us what's going on in the night sky and all kinds of trivial things, trivial pursuits,

and a new trivia contest, too, I betcha. Hey, trivia's not that trivial. No, it's not. At least not ours. Yeah, what's up? We got cool plans. By the way, I saw Delta 4 launch the other night. You did?

I did. Were you personally? No, I was just in Southern California. It was kind of an experiment for me. It turns out Vandenberg launches. They launch their first Delta 4, which is a pretty big rocket, and you could see it from Pasadena. Did it have that crazy contrail that they sometimes do?

It got a little crazy, a little crazy, a little wild, but not totally wacky. Anyway, there are places for those in Southern California and Central California, even Nevada. Find out on the web how to watch those. And of course, if you're near any other launch site, those of you in Guyana. Let's go on to what you can see, however, from anywhere in the world. And that includes Venus in the pre-dawn sky. So I'm not prejudiced by always presenting the evening sky first. This is our pre-dawn moment, so I'm not prejudiced by always presenting the evening sky first. This is our pre-dawn moment.

For the early risers. Yes. Now, moving on to the evening. Evening, interesting, fun, still got Mars and Saturn kind of dim. They were just snuggling a couple weeks ago, but they are indeed growing farther apart. But low in the west after sunset with Mars a little dimmer and more reddish. Actually, quite a bit dimmer. Mars and Saturn sitting in the sky.

K-I-S-S-N-E-R. Thank you for always raising the intellectual level of our show. I try. So, yes, there, there, Jupiter, really easy to see in the evening sky. Look up. Look up in the really, really, really bright thing high in the sky. In the south, if you're up in the northern hemisphere, or reverse it, if you're in the southern hemisphere,

it is the really bright object in the south if you're up in the northern hemisphere or reverse it if you're in the southern hemisphere. It is the really bright object in the evening sky. I was perhaps remiss in not mentioning the semi-close pass of a large asteroid in which we have survived July 2nd or 3rd, depending on where you were. It was 2004 XP-14, and I didn't mention it because you really have to be a fairly crazed amateur astronomer to track this puppy. Probably 500-meter object going by just outside the orbit of the moon. So another little wake-up call reminder. I'll come back to that object for a random space fact. Oh, cool, because I just thought it was so cool.

It has a good movie name, too, XP-14. That's a good one. 2004 XP-14 coming to a sky near you. Yeah, man, call Bruce Willis. This week in space history, first, however, it's that 1054 kind of time. That's right, 1054 A.D., Chinese astronomers observed the supernova that formed the Crab Nebula. Visible in the daytime to Chinese astronomers. Indeed, and probably others, but they actually wrote it down.

Yeah, right. That's the part that made them famous as Chinese astronomers. Moving on to... Random Space Fact! Almost blew out the microphone. Go ahead. Cool, dude. So our friend 2004 XP-14, when one of these comes by the Earth,

it's amazing to me how fast they are moving in a relative sense. It's outside the orbit of the Earth, but at its peak, it was actually moving about the width of the full moon every four minutes. Wow. So many degrees per hour, also making it rather challenging to observe. All the more reason not to run into one. Yeah. Yeah, they're moving really fast.

Turns out, although Planetary Society is sponsoring various projects, we'll have a new grant opportunity coming up for people who search for these puppies. And also, I have my own private thing on the side trying to come up with some type of airbag device. Well, you keep it up. You work on that.

I will. Moving on to the trivia contest, we asked you what NASA astronaut selection group was Buzz Aldrin in. How did we do, Matt? We got all kinds of information, not only about Buzz, but some people sent us lots of information about the whole group. The third group of NASA astronauts, October 1963. That's what Glenn Narocki told us.

Glenn is from Richmond, British Columbia. And by sheer coincidence, he's also our winner this week. So, Glenn. Happy Canada Day. And happy Planetary Radio t-shirt wearing to you, Glenn. And that third group had lots of other big, big names that came out of there in addition to Buzz.

We had, what, four moonwalkers and Anders and Bean and lots of people. Rusty Schweikert. Who wants to stop those guys like XP-14. Exactly. XP-14. Exactly. Exactly.

XP-14. You're going to write a book now, aren't you? I love it. Yeah. Yeah. Moving on to the next trivia contest. What planet has the smallest inclination, which is like for the Earth, it's 23 and a half degrees, that our axial tilt that gives us our seasons relative to our perpendicular of the orbit.

So for Earth 23.5 degrees, which planet has the smallest inclination? And you can go to planetary.org slash radio to send us your answer. I know you're thinking hard about it, Matt. No, I'm just thinking that this would therefore be the planet with the mildest seasons, right? Yes, exactly. Another good way to phrase it. Planetary.org slash radio to find out how to send us your email and try to compete for the glorious Planetary Radio t-shirt.

Get those entries to us by July 10, 2 p.m. Pacific time on July 10. We would love to hear from you with an entry or even just to say hi. All right, everybody, I think we're done here. So go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about how dark black is. Thank you, and good night. That leaves me completely in the dark. He's Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us every week for What's Up.

That's all the time we have for this week. That's all the time we have for this week. Join us again in seven days when our guest will be the guy with the coolest title in the solar system. John Rummel is NASA's planetary protection officer, making sure we don't infect them and they don't infect us. By the way, we hope you'll tune in all summer long as we bring you more VIPs from the world of space exploration, including Uranus and Neptune expert Heidi Hamel Thank you. Let us know how you hear the show. iTunes fans, don't forget that you may need to resubscribe to our new and improved feed. Just go to the iTunes Store and search for Planetary Radio. By the way, Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California.

Have a great week, everyone. Thank you.