Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Astrobots are Back on Our Show!

Episode Date: February 9, 2004

After a long hiatus, Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust return to the air. You'll also hear from Mars Exploration Rover Entry, Descent and Landing Chief Engineer Wayne Lee, and from two more of the Student Astronauts.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The astrobots are on Mars and back on our show. This is Planetary Radio. Hi, everyone. Yes, Biff and Sandy, our intrepid astrobots, are on Mars. This week, we'll begin to visit with them again and review their wild rides. One of the guys they can thank for getting them there safely will also be our guest. Surely you remember Wayne Lee and his American flag shirt. The chief engineer for entry, descent, and landing joins us in just a minute.

First, here's a quick visit with one of last week's student astronauts. I'll be right back. My name is Maciej Hermanowicz. I'm 17 years old. I live in DeWitte in Poland, and I'm one of the student astronauts. The work at JPL was a wonderful experience and really a magnificent adventure full of surprises.

The Mars Exploration Rover Team is really an international team of scientists because you've got here people from all over the world for not only from europe like from denmark from germany but you've got scientists from india from japan so it's really a magnificent thing to work in such a team truly the nationality is not what matters what matters matters is that you're from Earth and you're exploring Mars. When I'm back to Poland,

I have several press conferences on my experiences here, Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Additionally, I'm going to talk about it with my friends, talk about it on Internet chats, and I'm having a visit at the Ministry of Education with our ministers, so that will be plenty of media coverage on this team.

So many of us watched the glorious landings of Spirit and Opportunity, and are now watching the beautiful images and startling discoveries made by the Mars Exploration Rovers. It may be too easy to forget what got us to this point, the years of development, hundreds if not thousands of tests and design refinements, and scores of engineers at JPL and elsewhere to whom we should be grateful. Wayne Lee is one of the most visible members of the team, partly because of his pivotal role during both landings. I talked late last week with a very happy chief engineer for the entry, descent, and landing phase.

Wayne Lee, let's get the question that is foremost in everyone's minds out of the way first. Where did you get the shirt? Well, the shirt, it's not a matter of where I got the shirt, but I think why I chose to do that. What happened was I had worked Mars Pathfinder briefly in 1997, and as you know, we landed on the 4th of July. And so I wore a Stars and Stripes shirt that day to celebrate the landing and Independence Day. It was just a fun thing to do. So here we are seven or eight years later, and I decided, well, if Stars and Stripes was lucky back then, maybe it'll be lucky again. So right now, I think Stars and Stripes is a lucky three for three.

And I hear you weren't the only one wearing lucky clothing for these landings, both of them. But at least in your case, when you jumped up and down, the American flag was waving there at JPL. And you certainly had a lot to celebrate. It was just one of the most fantastic two nights. The second night where we knew that we were two for two was just one of those nights that I think members of the entry, descent and landing team hope would never end. I mean, it was just one gigantic locker gigantic big locker room celebration after the touchdown. Clearly that was the case, and I mean this in the most respectful way. You appeared to be, while doing your job, also one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders.

It was terrific to be able to listen to you basically providing narration as you ran things in your position as chief engineer for entry, descent, and landing. But those of us who were watching the webcast, first at our Wild About Mars event at the Pasadena Convention Center, and then for opportunity I was just watching along with millions of others at home, it was great to have you there to basically plot out for us those six minutes of terror and eventually triumph. Well, you know, I tell you, those six minutes went by so fast. It just, literally in a blink of eye, you're at the top of the atmosphere moving 12,000 miles an hour,

and then six minutes later you've hit the ground, and it's really one of those reasons they call it six minutes of terror really is in that time it's all or nothing. There is no second chance. It was just so exciting to be there in the control room watching the thing come down. I mean, we had the little electronic semaphore signals from the spacecraft coming back. So we knew what was going on to a large extent all the way through, and we knew it was alive and healthy coming down. And that's what led to all that.

That's what bred all that excitement. And I just wish that everybody around watching could have been there in the control room with us to share in all that excitement. Boy, I wish. We talked to Rob Manning a couple of weeks ago. I'm going to ask you what we asked him, but you have that additional couple of weeks of perspective. What surprised you about the functioning of these rovers during the phase that you had so much responsibility for? Well, you know what's interesting about this is that everybody out there sees two successful landings.

What we see looking from the inside is that we had an experimental flight system that was only tested all up for the first time on January 3rd because it's really impossible to test these things here on Earth in the fullest sense. So we're still learning things about how these things fly, and we found a lot of peculiarities about the way certain subsystems behaved that were beyond our expectations. Now, the reason that this did not affect the performance of the vehicle overall in the success is that we built in margin and robustness everywhere so that none of these peculiarities

ever came within an inch of even harming or possibly sinking the mission. But, for example, on both Spirit and Opportunity, the parachute deployed altitude was several kilometers lower than what we had targeted, and that was due in large part because the atmosphere was thinner than we expected, number one. And number two, the spacecraft flew through the upper parts of the atmosphere slightly differently than we had expected. So this is one of those mysteries that we need to solve so that we can make

downstream missions to Mars more successful in the future. So your work is certainly not over as we have two rovers doing their job on the surface of Mars. No. While the people doing the rover missions have their work cut out for them because they have to work on Mars time, at a leisurely 9 to 5 kind of schedule, the members of the Entry Descent Landing Team have been pouring over all this tremendous wealth of engineering flight telemetry. This was the most engineering flight telemetry that's ever been returned for a Mars landing. And so there's just a wealth of data here that will enable us to try to make future Mars landings more robust.

I am willing to bet that you and other people on the EDL team are thinking about this method of landing on another body, not just with Mars in mind, but maybe elsewhere in the solar system. I mean, is there any place else that would be appropriate? Well, you know, it's very difficult to take the system and land it anywhere else. For example, people have sort of in the hallway talk, you hear people talking about, well, maybe we could send the rovers to the moon well you know unfortunately on the moon there's no atmosphere and we rely on the atmosphere slowest down sure hypersonic flight and with

parachute so you know we kind of joke they want to do that search it's not big enough i was i was actually thinking of maybe titan titan is actually quite interesting in so far of using this landing system, insofar that the gravity on Titan is certainly slightly less than Mars, but the atmosphere is a lot thicker than what we have on Mars. So it might work, it might not, but that's something we really haven't given a lot of thought to. Well, now that the keys have essentially been turned over to the science teams, not that there aren't plenty of your engineering colleagues

still involved with these rovers. What precisely do you move on to as you analyze this data and, as you said, this proof of concept for a very good way to get to the Red Planet? Well, I think what we really move on to here is sort of a legacy that we leave to future engineers working Mars landings. When we started out, you know, we didn't invent everything from scratch, obviously.

You know, we had the Pathfinder design that we built upon, and the Pathfinder people built upon the Viking design from 1976. So we really owe it to the engineers of the future to document this work thoroughly so that they can benefit from everything we learned. I mean, I can tell you that in every single subject from hypersonic flight to parachutes to airbags to retro rockets, we learned a lot of things that were not known before in terms of how these systems actually operate. And so, in fact, a lot of the engineers that worked on the Entry Descent Landing Team have actually started jobs, at least working part-time, on the 07 Phoenix Lander

and on the 09 Mars Science Laboratory Lander. And they will take this knowledge with them into their new jobs. And hopefully these new projects will get a lot of benefit from what we're learning right now. I'd be willing to bet on that, too. We only have a couple of minutes left. I just wanted to bring it back personally. You've been one of the primary focuses of attention during the past month or so. I imagine that's beginning to slow down a little bit. I hear that the Special Press Accreditation Office

at JPL, in fact, closes today. Has that part of the ride been fun, too? It's probably been the most fun part of this, actually just going through and sharing with the world just the sheer joy and excitement of landing two things on Mars. However, I'd have to say that it was really never my intent to go out to grab this much attention because I think really credit is due on every single member of the Entry Descent landing team. And I think I got all the attention because I wore that American flag shirt. But really, I want to make sure that all the men and women that work hard on this really share equally in the credit.

And I think that all those people, they really feel a great sense of accomplishment over this. Well, we certainly salute all of you on the team and hope for continued success there at JPL and certainly for these rovers. How will you be following these missions, the missions of spirit and opportunity, staying in touch with the scientists? How will you be following these missions, the missions of Spirit and Opportunity, staying in touch with the scientists? Actually, I talk with them every day. Like today I was just at the news conference listening to the fascinating stories they were having about using the rock abrasion tool on the rock.

I can't pronounce it, but the one that's at the Spirit landing site. They were able to brush off the dust on it. It was just amazing and fascinating pictures. They've just got great mysteries to solve here, and I certainly wish them the best of luck in terms of making their discoveries. Certainly what they're going to do here is going to rewrite the scientific textbooks on what we know about the surface of Mars. And some incredible images coming back.

I was just on the site before we began to talk, and it's just one amazing picture after another. Thanks to you and the other folks, the other engineers who got them there safely. And also thank you very much for taking a few minutes to talk to us today, and we wish you continued success. Thank you very much. It was great to be here with your audience today. Wayne Lee has been the chief engineer for the entry, descent, and landing phase for the two extremely successful rovers now crawling around or rolling around on the surface of Mars. Planetary Radio will continue right after this.

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. Transcription by CastingWords 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. Bruce Betts is here for a special edition of What's Up. Bruce, we're going to do all the regular segments, and then, it's so overdue, so long overdue, we're going to bring back your two correspondents, right? Yes, Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust, astrobots extraordinaire, explorers, first astrobots on Mars, will be here, and we will be looking back on the last few weeks of excitement

as they've landed on Mars and the adventures they've gone through, and hopefully we'll be hearing from them more in the coming weeks as they're doing a great job. And you can always read their diaries online. And I can't wait to hear from Sandy how she came through having a rover drive right over her. But we'll get back to that. We're going to go on with our regular stuff now, take a quick break, be back with Biff

and Sandy. So, Bruce. Should we tell people what's up in the night sky? Could we please? Oh, yes. Well, we've got up in the night sky? Could we please? Oh, yes. Well, we've got Venus in the evening. It's that really bright thing up there in the west-southwest.

You've got Jupiter really bright, rising a couple hours later, not quite as bright as Venus, and up all through the dawn. Mars, you can find, continues to dim, but it's to the upper left of Venus and still looking reddish-orange-ish, much, much dimmer than Venus itself. And Saturn, a fabulously fun thing, up at dusk in the east-southeast and pretty much overhead by 10 or 11 p.m. in between Castor and Pollux, the bright stars one direction, and Orion in the other direction. Good stuff, good planets.

Have some fun. Go out there. Get a telescope. Be an amateur Good planets. Have some fun. Go out there. Get a telescope. Be an amateur astronomer. Or be a professional. We're not prejudiced one way or the other. On to this week in space history. On January 10, 1990, Galileo flew past Venus

on its way to Jupiter. Now you're saying, Venus? On its way to Jupiter? That seems odd. Well, this is one of the first times they were getting very creative with how to get things out to the outer solar system

using smaller rockets. And basically one way you can do that is doing gravity assists. And one place you can do that is by going past Venus and then in their case, coming back by Earth and using Earth itself.

And now, random space fact! Uranus's moon, Miranda, has amazing chevron-shaped geologic features. They're still looking for oil underneath them. That latter part is not true. The former is. Let's move on to our trivia contest, Matt. Last week, I asked people, what were the backup Mars Exploration Rover landing sites? Of course, they went to Spirit to Gusev Crater and Opportunity to Hematite Region, known, which in this case is Meridiani Planum.

What are the two backup sites? Now, the answers are, of course, Elysium Planitia and Isidis Planitia. Easy for you to say. Exactly. That's where basically during the whole process, there were well over 150 sites considered by scientists and engineers and people trying to figure out if they were interesting and if they were safe. And as they were coming down to the wire, they assigned two primary sites and two backups. So how did we do out there in listener land?

We did very well. I didn't know what our response would be to this contest. We ended up getting a lot of entries, and every one was correct. Would you like to hear our winner? Oh, I would, very much. Simon Halber. Simon Halber, who hails from Raleigh, North Carolina, had those two alternative landing sites for the two Mars Exploration Rovers.

Simon, congratulations. And you know what? You've got to tell us what size shirt you want, because, of course, you're going to get that fabulous Planetary Radio t-shirt. I have one on as we speak. Thank you. And it is fab.

It is fab. It's fabulous. Next time we've got which Apollo mission was the last to have put their astronauts through a post-flight quarantine? Afraid of critters they might bring back from the moon. Which Apollo mission was the last to put the astronauts through that post-flight quarantine?

The one that they frequently do to Matt and I, Matt and me, excuse me, here at the Planetary Society. Right after what's up, yeah. Exactly. We still have to go through a post-radio show quarantine. And depressurization, too. Exactly. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Enter our contest.

Win t-shirts. Have fun. Don't forget, enter our contest, win T-shirts, have fun. Don't forget, we still have other fun stuff going on, particularly tied to the Mars Exploration Rover mission on our website, planetary.org. We've got student astronauts writing journals. We, of course, have Biff and Sandy writing the astrobot diaries. And for the next couple weeks, you can still get involved in our decoding of the secret messages encoded on the DVDs on the Mars Exploration Rover spacecraft provided by the Planetary Society. Go to planetary.org and you'll find all that good stuff.

And Bruce, you know, one of the things I loved about that Apollo decontamination period where they put the astronauts in the airstream trailer and, you know, keep them there for, I don't know how long it was, a week or two, was the very first... Yeah, they got to go on a trip to the Grand Canyon. It's true. Anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry. There was that terrific photo of Richard Nixon on the aircraft carrier standing just outside

the airstream looking through the window at the Apollo 11 astronauts. And it's this wonderful, surreal photo of the first people ever to walk on the moon and outside Nixon in his dark suit. It's a great picture. Yes, I have seen that. It's quite amusing. There's actually a recording of what the astronauts were saying at that time. Is there?

There's kind of scratching on the glass. Anyway, we're done. We are. All right. We'll come to planetary.org and play with some of the other things we've got going these days. And, Matt, everyone out there, look up in the night sky and think what it would be like to tour the moon in an Airstream trailer. Thank you. Good night.

All right, Bruce, we're going to take that quick break that I mentioned, and then we're going to come right back with Biff and Sandy. So don't go away. The Astrobots are coming up in just a few seconds. Yay! My name is Janice DeBerg, and I'm 15 years old. I'm from Dyke, Iowa. I'm one of the student astronauts. One of the coolest things that I did here at JPL,

we were here to watch Opportunity Egress, which was really, really cool to watch at JPL what was going on in Mission Control. And we also got to watch the test rover dig a trench so it was like actually seeing what was going to happen on Mars only it was here in California. Dyke is a very small town it has about a thousand people there. Out where I live in the country I'm surrounded by fields and I live on a pig farm so there's not much not many people around me. The town was really, really supportive, and surrounding towns also, of me going to Pasadena. I have numerous cards, and everybody wished me luck, gave me care packages for the plane

and for staying here. Everybody at Dyke is reading my journals on the web, and lots of local newspapers have had me for interviews, and everybody wants to know what's going on. So Dyke has been very, very supportive. Okay, as promised, here is that long overdue segment, actually several segments that we're going to bring you from the astrobots, Biff Starling and Sandy Moondust. Now, we have a number of these.

We began capturing them quite a while back as they were approaching Mars. And then, of course, we'll be continuing them on the surface of Mars. We had all these communications. We wanted to share them with you in previous shows. We had technical difficulties. We had other stuff like. We wanted to share them with you in previous shows. We had technical difficulties. We had other stuff like Wham going on. Some of it was we just didn't have time. Oh, well, of course, the flash memory problem on Spirit.

We're excited that we can now bring these to you. And we're going to start with one from Biff. And these are actually Biff's reactions as he went through the Martian atmosphere. You'll also be able to hear just a little bit from Sandy at the end there, commenting right after Biff rolls to a halt on the Martian surface. The whole thing, of course, took a little more than six minutes. Yeah, it's that six minutes of absolute screaming terror, and that was those of us here on Earth.

Well, let's find out how Biff dealt with it. He was there. Let's roll that tape. Well, let's find out how Biff dealt with it. He was there. Let's roll that tape. Must be starting to hit the top of the atmosphere now. Whoa, cool.

Feeling kind of squished. Feeling really squished. Must be near the maximum slowing down. Ow. Waka. That must have been the parachute going out. Ah! Ah!

It's starting to be a little bit more soothing. Whoa! Falling sensation. Must be dropping down from the lander on that horse thing. Wow! Cool noise! That must have been the airbags inflating, which means I really hope those are rockets to slow me down. Whoa, free fall, leading to, oh, bouncing, serious spinning, and, oh, another bounce.

Ew, another. This is so cool. What a ride. Oh, what a rush. Oh, oh, bouncing more. Oh, off and out. Oh, what a rush. Oh, oh, bouncing more. Oh, off and out. Oh, slowing. Oh, rocking back and forth, back and forth, all stop.

Oh, I seriously want to do that again. That was so awesomely cool. Eloquent as always, Biff. By the way, that horse thing would be a bridle, and it has nothing to do with horses. It is a long cable that stretches between the back shell and the ladder. Well, Dedette, it's a little hard to think clearly after being squished, braddled, and spun. Wow, that was exciting, and quite a ride for Biff, man. Here is one I'm told this is recording of Biff's comments right after he peeled himself up off of that DVD

that's mounted on the Spirit Rover. This is one very tiny step for a tiny robot, One very tiny step for a tiny robot, and, well, one somewhat larger step for dudes and dudettes everywhere. Mars totally rocks, and it has a lot of rocks, but not as many as I expected. Goose-F Crater is so cool looking. Not as rocky as expected. Quite flat. Way beautiful in a desolate kind of a way. And really, really rad.

Well, that certainly matches up with those images that we saw coming back in just the first few days of the Spirit Rover's time on the Martian surface there in Gusev Crater. Now, some of those images that came back, of course, were of Biff himself, and the Planetary Society provided DVD on the lander with the four million names of people who wanted their names on Mars. Right after that, Biff apparently announced another contest. Hey, with these images back on Earth now, I can tell you about the secret coded message I've put on the surface of the DVD for everyone out there on Earth to try to decode.

It's a special message from me. The code is kind of tough, but my friends from the Planetary Society Astrobot Corps back home will keep giving you new clues. home, we'll keep giving you new clues. Everyone who gets it right gets a cool certificate. And some randomly chosen winners get Lego and Planetary Society prizes. Cool tips! Go to planetary.org.

Alright, I think this next segment is probably the last one we're going to have time for this week. We will try and have more of Biff and Sandy on next week's show. Let's play back this conversation that I had with Biff and Sandy not long after Biff's landing. Biff, I understand that you have debuted more haiku, including one from shortly after your landing. Would you mind sharing it with us?

I'd love to, Matt. Here it goes. Dark cocoon unfolds. Reddish sky floods open eyes. New home revealed. Biff, are you stealing haikus? That didn't stink. Thanks for the high compliment, Sandy.

Of course I'm not stealing poetry. Mars inspires me. Well, I have to say, Biff really seems to be hitting his stride up there on Mars. Next week we'll hear more from Sandy Moondust, Biff's astrobot companion on the red planet. Of course you can read their diaries at planetary.org. You'll also want to return next time for the latest news from Stardust, now headed back to Earth with a precious load of comet stuff dating back to the birth of our solar

system. I hope you'll join us. Have a great week.