Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Case for a Return to Enceladus

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Morgan Cable of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is lead author of a paper that makes a compelling argument for a mission to Saturn’s small but dynamic moon Enceladus. She and her stellar co-authors believe it is among the best and easiest places in our solar system to look for evidence of life. Morgan has also been involved with the synthesis of organic crystals that could exist on Titan. What would they mean for possible biological activity on that big moon? Bruce Betts shares his excitement about the current night sky in What’s Up. https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/morgan-cable-enceladus-titan-co-crystalsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Making the case for a return to Enceladus, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome, I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. NASA Jet Propulsion Lab researcher Morgan Cable balances a lot of tasks, and sometimes she balances herself on a mountain unicycle. You'll have to listen to the end of our recent conversation to learn about that. Along the way, you'll hear her passionate plea for a mission to Saturn's tiny but very active moon. Morgan is lead author on a paper that lays out the reasons. She'll also tell us about fascinating work with organic crystals that may be common on Saturn's biggest moon, Titan, the target of the

upcoming Dragonfly mission. How many spaceships are parked at the International Space Station? That space trivia quiz from Bruce Betts has generated some very entertaining answers and a first-time winner. And we'll talk in a minute or so with my Planetary Society colleague, Kate Howells, about the brand new issue of our magazine, The Planetary Report, that you can read at planetary.org. Kate also helps pull together our weekly newsletter, The Downlink. There's a stunning picture of Galaxy Centaurus A at the top of the September 10th issue. It combines images taken at X-ray, optical, infrared, and radio wavelengths. Below it are these and other headlines. Perseverance, the 2020 Mars rover,

has now collected two samples from rock dubbed Rochette. Exploration of Jezero Crater is really rolling along now. China's Chang'e 5 is on the move again. It may be headed back to orbiting the moon after returning lunar samples to Earth, or it may head to a near-Earth asteroid. Nice to have choices, I guess. Cosmonauts and astronauts are staying busy outside the International Space Station, activating the new Nauka module and preparing to install huge new solar panels. And you may have heard that launch of the James Webb Space Telescope is targeted for December 18th. Godspeed, JWST. Kate Howells is the communications strategy and Canadian space policy advisor for the Planetary Society.

I reached her this week at her home near Toronto. Kate, it is always great to see the Planetary Report show up, both in our website, but also because I'm a member and I get that beautiful print edition of the magazine. I love to see that in my mailbox, beginning with the piece that you contributed, which is sort of the lead article in the September Equinox edition. And it is titled The People's Space Telescopes. You open by saying that there are things we can only appreciate in the abstract, at least for now, saying that there are things we can only appreciate in the abstract, at least for now, things like the oceans of Jupiter's moon Europa or the interior of a black hole, God forbid. But a space telescope like the Hubble gives us something much more tangible and frequently quite beautiful. Absolutely. My experience through my own journey as a space enthusiast and just from talking to other people is that often

one of the easiest ways to get into space is by seeing images. I mean, it's something that you don't need to have any science background to appreciate. You don't need any context to understand. Like if I show you an image of a nebula, I don't have to explain what it is for you to say, wow, that's gorgeous. And what I think is fantastic about space images is that once you are hooked in by how beautiful space is, then you can start to get some of the science, some of the explanation of what it is that you're seeing and what's going on, you know, under the surface. And that just, I think, is a great way to lure people in and sort of cultivate that appreciation for space that we already

enjoy so much. No question about it. And it is hard to believe that at any time in the past, there were people who doubted the power of images taken from space, of our solar system, even of our own planet. This is a great opportunity. I never miss one to talk about our co-founder, Bruce Murray. Yeah, Bruce Murray is a legendary figure in space exploration, and he was one of the people who really first championed including cameras on space missions. idea for the Mariner fleet of spacecraft that NASA sent to Mercury, Venus, and Mars in the 1960s to include cameras, saying that at the very least, this would have benefit to the public for

engagement in this mission. NASA agreed and put cameras on the spacecraft. And now you would never imagine sending a spacecraft to another world without cameras on it, because not only does it engage the public in a way that would otherwise never be possible, it also does have a lot of science and engineering usefulness. I think of the Juno mission as a great example, because it was not originally envisioned with a camera, but Scott Bolton and others definitely wanted one, Juno cam, the people's Jupiter camera. And it turns out to have contributed very greatly to the science that that still active orbiter is doing. Of course, your piece is largely about the Hubble Space Telescope.

And there is no better proof, I think, of the popularity of the Hubble than the grassroots effort that saved it a little more than 15 years ago. Talk about that campaign. In 2004, NASA announced that Hubble was not going to receive its last servicing mission. There were a couple of things wrong with it. Its batteries were running down. Some of its instruments were failing. And NASA said it was just too risky to send astronauts to go fix it because it would have required, yeah, a crew of astronauts. The Space Shuttle Columbia disaster had just happened. So I think the risk tolerance for crewed missions was a little bit lower than it had been previously. And so the announcement came down that Hubble was just going to have to end its life as a spacecraft. to have to end its life as a spacecraft. The public outcry was enormous. People love Hubble.

I mean, to this day, Hubble, I think, is one of the most popular spacecraft because it does, it delivers these undeniably gorgeous, breathtaking images. And so people took it upon themselves to save this mission. Planetary Society, of course, was deeply involved in this. We had members sending letter to Congress. We coordinated with other campaigns that popped up online around the world. So people in the U.S. could contact Congress directly, but people around the world were writing to the U.S. government, urging them to support a mission to save Hubble. And it worked. The government heard loud and clear that this is something deeply meaningful to people and absolutely worth the risk. And I think NASA astronauts and or astronauts around the world embrace that risk as well in the job they take on. And so they sent a servicing mission in 2009 and fixed Hubble. And we're still getting images back from Hubble to this day. So

it's just a beautiful story of people really showing how much they care about a particular mission. It is a heroic story, I think. It was only last week, as you and I speak, that we got the announcement of a launch date, finally, for the follow-on to the Hubble Space Telescope. That leads us into talking about the main piece, the terrific feature that is at the core of this new edition of the Planetary Report. Yes, James Webb Space Telescope launching is an extraordinarily exciting thing because it has been coming up soon, you know, in a few years, any time now, for such a long time. Pretty much as long as I've been interested in space, you know, in a few years, anytime now, for such a long time, pretty much as long as I've been interested in space, I've been looking forward to this mission.

And I'm sure many people can say the same. So the fact that it's actually launching in just a couple months is very, very exciting. It's going to knock our socks off, I'm sure, in terms of what it's going to show us in terms of imagery, but also what it's going to teach us about the universe. So if you read the latest issue of the Planetary Report, which you can find online for free at planetary.org, or if you're a member, you'll get it in the mail. We have a fantastic article from Nancy Atkinson talking about basically everything you would want or need to know about this mission. So sort of the whole history of how it came to be, why it's taken this long, what it's going to do, what we can all look forward to discovering. It's such a great overview of a very exciting mission. And I think if you already were excited after reading this, you'll be even more excited for

this mission to finally launch in November. It's another terrific article by Nancy. She's such a good writer, but it is also full of terrific images of the development of the telescope and what we expect it to do. There's much more in this quarter's edition of the Planetary Report that we don't have time to mention, but I hope you can say something about how we've once again put the A in STEM, making it STEAM, with work from another great space artist. Yes, one of the best things about my job is that I receive all the emails of Planetary Society members sending us their artwork. So all you out there listening, whether you're a member or not, send us your artwork. It's such a delight to see how space inspires people.

One of the recent submissions we got was from a Planetary Society member named Barbara Fee Sheehan. She does unbelievable paintings inspired by Hubble imagery. We have one of her paintings on the back cover, and then we have another little feature showing her standing among several of her paintings and a little article from her talking about how she was inspired. Her story is just so inspirational to me as well. In 2015, she was 71 years old, and she for the first time came across a Hubble Space Telescope image. And it just fascinated her so much that it inspired her to start painting these images. And she has a huge collection of work. It's absolutely gorgeous. And it's just wonderful to see that at any time in your life, you can become inspired by space and take whatever it is that your strength is, whether it's

science or art or writing or anything else, and you can use space as something to inspire you. You can see Barbara's gorgeous work at planetary.org. If you want to go directly there, planetary.org slash TPR for the Planetary Report. It is in itself a gorgeous edition of our quarterly magazine from the Planetary Society. Kate, thank you for giving us a little tour, and we'll talk again soon. Always a pleasure, Matt. Thank you. Kate Howells is the Planetary Society's Communication Strategy and Canadian Space Policy Advisor. Who isn't in favor of a return to Enceladus?

Probably no one listening to this show, and certainly not Morgan Cable or the many co-authors of her recent paper on this topic. Morgan is a research scientist and group supervisor in the Astrobiology and Oceans Worlds Group at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California. She worked on the Cassini mission as a project science systems engineer and is now part of the Europa Clipper mission that will visit that ocean moon of Jupiter.

Her work and research have taken her from Iceland to the Atacama Desert in Chile, with a stop at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. In 2018, she was named by the American Chemical Society as one of the Tal 12 rising stars in chemistry. Morgan very generously made time to talk with me a few days ago on what was her birthday. Morgan Cable, welcome to Planetary Radio for a long overdue conversation. Very happy to have you on the show.

Oh, thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here. You know, I think I already told you that your colleague at JPL, Linda Spilker, has been telling me for ages that I should get you in front of a microphone as our guest. My fault, I wasn't until I saw a recent article in Wired Magazine that I thought, oh, Morgan Cable. Yeah, Linda said I should talk with her. That article was about some recent work that you have led about so-called co-crystals on Titan, but we're going to come back to that because really where I want to start is another article that you did recently for the Planetary Science Journal. You were the lead author among many distinguished colleagues,

including Linda and our past guest, Carolyn Porco, who is listed as the second author. We will provide a link to the science case for a return to Enceladus on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio. But I want to thank you for it. I read it. It is a compelling case that you build for Enceladus and even a very exciting one. So congratulations on that. And thank you as well. Oh, well, thanks so much. It was a pleasure to write. In many ways, Enceladus makes that case beautifully on its own.

And it's a wonderful story to be able to tell. How important to this effort is what we learn from Cassini over its 13 years in the Saturnian system in helping you to build the case that you make? Cassini is the reason that we now have these incredible insights into Enceladus, as well as many other moons, the rings, and knowledge of Saturn itself. It's such an incredible, almost a mini solar system in and of itself, the complexity, the diversity of worlds that we see there. Before we built and launched Cassini, we thought that many of the places in the outer solar system were just cold,

dead, boring worlds. And we got that notion completely turned upside down thanks to the amazing discoveries that Cassini made. Don't you love how the solar system just has an endless series of surprises for us? It's fantastic. It's one of the reasons I love my job so much. One of the things that came out in your article, we all know the great success that Cassini had as it flew through those plumes rising out of the surface of Enceladus, those wonderful tiger stripes, so- work that indicates that even the more complex organics that Cassini was able to detect could be fragments of much more complex organics that have simply broken down. I found that very striking.

Yes, this is very exciting work that's done by the leads of two instruments. One of them is called the Cosmic Dust Analyzer, and another one is called the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer. And these two instruments were aboard Cassini, and the PIs, the principal investigators of those instruments, came together to work on this analysis. One of the cool things that Cassini did, as you mentioned, it was brave enough to fly through this plume of gas and ice grains spewing out of Enceladus's

South Pole. It did that multiple times and at different speeds. Now, this is really cool. You can sort of picture maybe if you grew up in a place where it snows. I did not. I grew up in Florida, but I can still picture sticking your head out of the car window and trying to catch a snowflake. And that might be easier to do at, say, 10 miles an hour than 50. But now imagine you're going 7 to 17 kilometers a second, which is many times faster than a speeding bullet. That ice grain, that snowflake, will go poof, essentially, at those speeds. And you can then analyze the bits that are inside. But depending on how fast you're going, at some slower speeds, you can volatilize, which means get into the gas phase, something

going from solid to gas. And you can also ionize the things that are in there. Now that's important because a lot of these instruments that I've mentioned, they can only see things that have a charge, things that are ions. And so at those slower speeds, we could look at sort of the bigger molecules that are there. But at these faster speeds, we noticed that we had more smaller bits. And so you're exactly right. That tells us that potentially some of these larger molecules are breaking up at those really fast speeds. So that gives us some hints and some clues as to the larger molecules that are outside of the mass range that these instruments were capable of seeing. Because when Cassini was built, we didn't think that liquid water was out this far.

Cassini was not meant to be a search for life mission. And so its instruments were geared towards looking at small molecules that we wanted to characterize and understand, not things like proteins or bits of cells. And hopefully a future mission will be able to tackle that problem. Proteins and bits of cells. Okay. That's a nice little tease for what we may be reaching in this conversation. If we were building Cassini now, and in a sense we are because the great dragonfly mission is currently being put together and Europa Clipper is even farther along. But if we were doing this now, do we have the instruments? Could we build the instruments that had they been on Cassini would have detected these much more complex compounds if they're there? We think so.

A lot of development has gone on to mature instruments to address this question of are we alone? to address this question of, are we alone? Is Earth the only place that's inhabited? Or are we just one example of many different inhabited worlds in our own cosmic backyard and beyond? We've seen a lot of these instruments tested on Mars, which is a great proven ground. But now thanks to discoveries of Cassini and other missions like Galileo and even the Voyagers, we now know liquid water exists in a variety of different places in our solar system. And one thing we've learned is that if you follow the water, you can look for signatures of life in these environments that we call habitable environments. That means that they may have the conditions suitable for life as we know

it, potentially life as we don't know it too in some cases. And so that's why we're developing these instruments to search these habitable environments for evidence of life. I'm going to come back to that question of weird life, life as we don't know it as well. With what we now know of Enceladus' history, and I know there's still a lot we don't know, can we say that it's been around long enough and that maybe the liquid water under that ice has been there long enough for us to think, I mean, using Earth as an example, because it's the only one we have, that there's just been enough time for biological activity if it has happened on Enceladus or under that ice? That is a great question. And that's something that many scientists have been working on understanding for Earth for a long time. We still don't know how long it takes for life to emerge.

All we can do is take the one example we have, which is life here on earth, and dig through the record as far back as it goes to see if we can bound that question. And we've had a lot of really smart people looking at the most ancient rocks that we can find here on earth for evidence that can help us do that. We've found so far, the best we can say is that it takes no more than a billion years. So one billion years is the data point that we have on Earth saying that life definitely formed within that time period. It could have formed in a much shorter time scale, but those records have been lost because as you know, Earth is very active. Tectonics have recycled a lot of those previous bits of evidence here on Earth. So we can maybe assume that as an upper bound. And then the question is, okay, well, if it takes a billion years for life

to form, presumably, are worlds like Enceladus old enough? And have they had habitable conditions, things like liquid water, an energy source, molecular building blocks? Have those things been around long enough? And we're not really sure, but we're not going to know if we don't go and test that and try to find out. Let's talk about what a mission, a return to Enceladus might look like. In the piece that you were lead author for, you talk about different approaches to this, landers, orbiters, whether an orbiter should orbit Saturn as Cassini did, or whether it should orbit Enceladus. I mean, what would your preference be? Oh gosh, I would love to do all of those things because you learn different things

at different stages of a mission. So a few other studies have looked at different mission architectures. In fact, there's one in that same issue of the Planetary Science Journal, talking about something called an Orbilander. This is a joint orbiter that then would land on Enceladus. And the interesting thing is you can get a lot from orbit, especially at Enceladus, or even by flybys. You don't even necessarily need to land to collect some of that precious ocean material. Enceladus is the only world where we know for sure it's spewing free sample from its ocean into space. So there's a lot that you can do by scooping up some of those grains and sampling the gases to understand that environment. Ultimately, it would be great to also land.

You can collect more sample that way. And for some of these sensitive instruments, if you're looking for trace species, that can be important to do. And at JPL, we're even developing some concepts that could get down into those crevasses and potentially reach the ocean directly, which in my book, that would be the home run. and potentially reach the ocean directly, which in my book, that would be the home run. But I think we've got a lot of exciting concepts that depending on what we can afford to do with the timing,

there are a lot of different places to explore in the solar system. We've got a menu of options we could choose from. As you and I speak, I learned anyway, just a few minutes ago, that Perseverance on Mars just made its second successful collection of material from Jezero Crater. And especially when we someday get them back here on Earth into laboratories. What I'm really thinking of in this case is planetary protection and everything that had to be done to make sure that those sample tubes were maybe the cleanest things humans have ever created on Perseverance and that the rest of the

spacecraft, we minimize the chance for contaminating anything that might be on Mars. Well, okay, here we are talking about Enceladus, whether it's a lander or, and I would guess an orbiter that's orbiting Enceladus might cause even more concern because you probably wouldn't have the chance to crash it into Saturn as Cassini did. Are these concerns also for the community as you talk about learning what we can about Enceladus? Absolutely. What would be worse than finally finding life for the first time in human history somewhere

else and then realizing that we put it there, that we had accidentally brought it with us. And it's definitely a concern. That's one reason why flyby type missions that still orbit around Saturn in some respects may be the safest because you can still fly through the plume and sample it, but then you can do that spacecraft disposal, as you mentioned, somewhere else, somewhere that is less habitable. Maybe Saturn itself or some of the other moons that don't have any evidence of liquid water oceans. And so that's an option. Anything that would land on a place like Enceladus would have to have some way to guarantee that it would not contaminate that subsurface ocean for a certain period of time. There is an international agreement through something called a COSPAR, where we have planetary

protection requirements that each mission has to meet. And given that we found all these amazing habitable worlds, of course, the scientists want to go there, but then planetary protection says, Of course, the scientists want to go there, but then planetary protection says, well, you've got to go there carefully and not contaminate that world. So there are negotiations and agreements that take place for each mission to determine how it will satisfy those strict requirements. We all definitely want to search these worlds for evidence of life, but we need to do so safely so that they're preserved and kept pristine. We know how almost ridiculously complex sample return from Mars is, and yet it's underway. Have you considered getting material back from Enceladus to labs on Earth? Oh, yes, we have considered. Sample return, at least a couple of concepts have been proposed, and I encourage you. I think we cited a couple of those papers in our report, but there are other places online where those might be available. The one issue with Enceladus is time, right? Space is big. Saturn is 10 times further out than Earth is from the sun. It's massive distances, and that takes a while to traverse. Cassini took about seven years to get to the Saturn system. You can imagine a sample return mission would be about double that.

for cryogenic sample storage such that we could have that option. So that's definitely something to consider because we have worked very hard to advance a lot of these instruments to be able to send them on these robotic explorers. But of course, they're not going to be quite as good as the massive instruments we have here in laboratories that are too large to send on a spacecraft. You mentioned that great orbilander concept. What is the current status? I mean, as I said, you make this compelling case, but it's going to take a good deal of money and commitment to send even an orbiter, much less a lander, back to that icy moon. What's your evaluation of the current outlook and the interest in doing this at NASA? Oh, boy. Well, Orbilander, the Enceladus Orbilander concept was one of many that were funded by NASA through something called the Planetary Mission Concept Studies. And the point

of doing these now is that every 10 years, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, is that every 10 years, the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine puts forth a document called the Planetary Science and Astrobiology, this time, it's the first time they have astrobiology in the title, Decadal Survey. And that means once a decade, this recommendation comes out that basically says, NASA, if you want to do cool science, these are the things that we recommend doing. And that also includes some recommendations of different missions, flagship missions like Cassini, like the Mars 2020 rover, but also some smaller missions as well. And that is currently underway. I'm grateful to be a part of that process. And so the Enceladus-Orbylander concept, along with many others, these reports gave us a lot of information

that now this panel of, or many panels actually, excuse me, of experts in science and engineering will take to make those recommendations about what NASA should do for the next 10 years. And that process is underway right now. And the draft report will be out in March of 2022. At least that's the current plan. Maybe you can have me on again and we can talk about all of the exciting developments from that report at that time. That's an excellent suggestion. Thank you. And rest assured that all of us at the Planetary Society will be looking forward to that decadal survey report and hoping that it includes one of these mission profiles for Enceladus. Much, much more from Morgan Cable is ahead, including

our truly fascinating discussion of a paper for which she is co-lead author with Tom Runchevsky. They and others are learning about organic co-crystals that just might be found on Saturn's big moon Titan. This is Planetary Radio. Hi again, everyone. It's Bruce. Many of you know that I'm the program manager for the Planetary Society's LightSail program. LightSail 2 made history with its launch and deployment in 2019, and it's still sailing. It will soon be featured in the Smithsonian's new Futures Exhibition. Your support made this happen. LightSail still has much to teach us. Will you help us sail on into our extended mission? Your gift will sustain daily operations and help us inform future solar sailing missions like NASA's NEA Scout. When you give today, your contribution will be matched up to $25,000

by a generous society member. Plus, when you give $100 or more, we will send you the official LightSail 2 extended mission patch to wear with pride. Make your contribution to science and history at planetary.org slash S-A-I-L-O-N. That's planetary.org slash sail on. Thanks. Let's turn to a different world, a sister world of Enceladus circling Saturn. This is the one that made me think, you know, slap my forehead and say, I really got to get Morgan on the show. And it was a piece based on another article that you did pretty recently. It was in the accounts of chemical research, Titan in a test tube, organic co-crystals and implications for Titan mineralogy.

And we'll put a link up at planetary.org slash radio from this week's show page, of course. First of all, can you tell us what a co-crystal is? Sure. This is some really exciting work that we've been doing in the laboratory here on Earth to try to understand Titan. It's such a fascinating world. It's similar to Earth in some ways, and yet it's so very different.

And co-crystals are a great example. The best way you can think about these is they're essentially minerals on Titan, but they're made of different stuff. Most of the minerals we have here are made of rock, right? Silica, carbonates, minerals like that. But on Titan, they're made out of the building blocks that are more common on that world surface, which are organic molecules, things like acetylene, which you may be familiar with for acetylene torches or butane lighters, even hazardous compounds like benzene. So we always work with these very carefully in the laboratory. There's a saying, they're old chemists, they're bold chemists, they're no old,

bold chemists. And I plan on living a very long time. So we work with these hazardous compounds in very small amounts and very carefully. But it's so fun to freeze these down to tighten surface temperatures, which are really cold. It's about minus 183 degrees Celsius. Don't ask me what that is in Fahrenheit. I'm a scientist, so I don't work in Fahrenheit. It's cold. It's very cold. Yes, it is. And even just simple mixtures of these, we combine two chemicals, two gases here on Earth, but they're frozen solid on Titan. And they'll rearrange and form these unique mineral structures that have different properties. And we're just scratching the surface now of this new field that we call Titan cryo-mineralogy. I love that phrase. I love that title for this field, which I had not

specifically heard of before, cryominerology. These crystals form because of these conditions on Titan. Would you find anything like these on Earth, at least made of simple organic molecules? So there are a few, I think one or two examples of organic minerals here on earth. They're made out of larger molecules. And so far to my understanding, they're pure. So they're only made up of one thing. Because of that, we don't have a lot of examples here on earth to study them. Luckily though, the conditions of titan are relatively easy to reproduce in the lab, assuming that you have access to liquid nitrogen. That's one of the ways that we can study and characterize these compounds. And I want to mention that if people take a look at that article,

which we will put up the link to, it's more of the intersection between art and science, in my opinion, because there is an image of some of these co-crystals which have now been created in the lab. And they're quite beautiful. And I will also add to my untrained and inaccurate eye, I could have confused them with biological activity. Oh, gosh. Yeah, some of them do have very interesting shapes. Some of them are blocky and square and look kind of closer to maybe table salt or sugar. Others are long needle-like structures and they change over different temperature scales. Or

one fun thing we'll do is we'll dump liquid methane or ethane on top of them to simulate a rain on Titan because Titan has methane and ethane rain. They'll change color. Sometimes they'll become translucent. They're quite beautiful. It's very fun to be able to explore these in the laboratory and basically just play around and then shoot a laser at them and characterize what they are actually made of. What do these crystals mean, if anything, for the possibility of biological activity on, I almost said Enceladus, on Titan? That's a great question and something we're interested in exploring too. I'm actually working with a student at USC who is studying a certain type of microorganism that eats acetylene.

Acetylene is one of these molecules that we found is really prevalent in Titan minerals. We know its presence in Titan's atmosphere and on its surface. And so one idea is that these minerals could act as reservoirs, basically ways to sequester away this particular molecule and make it available for communities of life that could sustain themselves, make it available for communities of life that could sustain themselves, essentially eating it as food. Wow. So one woman's co-crystal is another organism's lunch, it sounds like. What do you think of work by people like your colleague, Chris McKay, and many others that try to work out the chemistry of life, perhaps using these co-crystals, these compounds that you've been talking about. I mean, it would by definition be weird life, right?

Life as we don't know it. Oh, I think it's fascinating. And it's one of the reasons that gets me really excited to get up and go into work because we still just have the sample size of one for life. And as astrobiologists, as scientists, we try very hard not to let that bias ourselves because any life that we discover somewhere else could be made out of different stuff. It could reveal itself in different ways, but it's still going to follow the basic rules of chemistry and physics. And because of that, we can still do a lot to understand and bound these questions in the laboratory. As an experimental chemist, that's

really exciting for me because the things I'm doing in the lab here on Earth have such broad implications when we're sending robotic explorers to extend our senses to the outer planets and beyond. I want to talk about that robotic explorer that will in a few years be headed to Titan, Dragonfly, of course. But I got to add somewhat reluctantly, you ever read or see the Andromeda Strain? I have, yes.

Yeah, well, Andromeda Strain, that was a crystal. It was, wasn't it? That's right. Very cool. Well, I promise if we do characterize any alien crystalline life in the lab, you'll be the first to know. Yeah, and don't let anybody in a little town in Arizona open up the return capsule, please. Get to it first. We'll do our best.

Thank you. Let's talk about Dragonfly and why this kind of work that you're doing that may tell us what to expect on Titan, why that's so important. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I am so stoked about Dragonfly. This is, so picture one of the big Mars rovers, you know, Curiosity or the Perseverance rover. They're about the size of a car. Take the wheels off and put skis on and then give it four sets of two counter-rotating helicopter blades. That is Dragonfly, and it is amazing, and I'm so excited to be a part of it as a co-investigator on this mission. The reason that we're doing something that seems this crazy is because on a world like Titan, the gravity is much less than Earth. It's about the same as our

moon, so picture how light you would be there. Plus, its atmosphere is dens Earth. It's about the same as our moon. So picture how light you would be there. Plus its atmosphere is denser. It's about one and a half times thicker. And so that means that it's actually more efficient to fly and traverse the amazing terrains of this world in these series of hops. It's more efficient to do it that way than it would be to drive like a traditional rover. Dragonfly is slated to land on Titan in 2034. And we'll make some amazing discoveries every time we send something to land on a world in situ is what we call it. The measurements you can make, the images you can take, everything is just so much more visceral and personal because you're there. And you don't have to look at it from afar. You're in the environment experiencing

it for the first time. I cannot wait to see some of those images of seas of methane and ethane and canyons dug by the same materials. It's just, it is beyond thrilling. It's going to be amazing. And I should note that Dragonfly is not the first time we will have landed on Titan. The Huygens probe, which was part of the Cassini mission. This was a contribution from the European Space Agency, was the first lander on Titan. We should get that out there. But it was battery powered.

It was actually designed to float in methane or ethane. At that time, we thought that all of Titan was covered in a sea of liquid hydrocarbons. We still don't know where all of those mysterious hydrocarbons went. There's a question about the missing ethane we can talk about if you want. But yeah, so Huygens landed. It was battery powered. It lasted for a few hours and gave us some great images, but, uh, dragonflies scheduled or is planned to at least for its, its prime mission to be on Titan surface for two and a half years. So two and a half years versus just a few hours, we're going to learn so many incredible things. Big advantage of having a, uh, a radioactive,

uh, uh, source of energy that of energy that can work for you like it's working for Perseverance and Curiosity on Mars right now, as well as the Voyager spacecraft still out there and still going strong. I was going to move on, but you've intrigued me now with your mention of the missing ethane. I know that we found the methane. Where's the ethane? I know that we found the methane. Where's the ethane? That is one of the big questions. So we've got this thick atmosphere on Titan. It's mostly nitrogen, but it has a significant amount of methane, about 5%. And because of photochemistry, so light from the sun, as well as some other processes because of Saturn's magnetosphere, that methane is actually being converted primarily into ethane. So there are two big mysteries, actually. One of them is, why is there still methane in the atmosphere? It should have been gone after, I believe,

about 100,000 years. And Titan's definitely older than that. So why is there still methane? It must be coming from somewhere. And also, where is this ethane? There should be an ocean meters thick covering the entire surface of Titan. And there's not. So some scientists think that maybe it's been sucked down into the interior of Titan somehow. Some evidence for that is that all of the lakes in the northern hemisphere, in the North Pole, they're all exactly the same height, which is weird, which makes us think that maybe they're all connected by some subsurface. They don't call it an aquifer because aqua is water. They call it an alcanifer or alcanifer because it's alkanes, hydrogen, excuse me. Easy for you to say. Yeah, I'm not going to try. Yeah, chemists, they train you how to say these things before you get your PhD in chemistry.

No, but it's one of the fascinating mysteries. And the instrument suite aboard Dragonfly and the many in situ measurements that we'll be able to get with that mission should really help shed some light on some of these key mysteries. What do you think of this speculation that there could actually be two biospheres on Titan, one that would be weird on the surface, and maybe another one, maybe not too different from what we might someday find in the ocean under the ice on Enceladus? Oh, it's one of the things that makes me so excited to work on Titan as a chemist. Because, yeah, you have these two completely different solvents, right? One is polar, liquid water. Titan has a liquid water ocean underneath all the cool stuff happening on the surface.

Deep down, it's got a liquid water ocean, just like Enceladus, just like Europa, and just like Earth. And yet, on the surface, it has this completely alien solvent, nonpolar. So that means that anything that dissolves in water is not going to dissolve in liquid methane and ethane. It'll solubilize and allow chemistry to happen for completely different molecules. And it's something that we can study in the lab, but there's no way we're going to replicate the complexity of a world like Titan. We have to go there and explore these places ourselves to really wrap our arms around all of the amazing science that's happening. But I have to say, as a chemist, it's so cool to be able to bring in many of my colleagues who study, you know, polymer chemistry, organic chemistry, things like that, who are now able to come in and really make significant contributions to planetary science

and potentially to astrobiology too. It's a really fun way to engage that side of the community. So take note, science fiction writers out there, and I know a few of you are out there. Here's that story idea, the war of the Titanic Biospheres. You can credit me when you write the book. Just one other thing about this work that you and so many others are doing to prepare for Dragonfly, it makes me think of what happened with Viking, those utterly amazing missions from the mid-1970s that did such wonderful work, such sophisticated machines way ahead of their time. But we just didn't know that much about the surface of Mars. And that had a big

effect on the science that they were able to do and send back to Earth. I guess this is in large part an effort to avoid that problem? Certainly. And back when the two Viking landers landed on Mars, we actually only knew about two of the three branches of life. Archaea hadn't even been discovered yet. So it's not only that we were learning about Mars and Mars's surface properties, we're also still learning about life and the extreme places where it can be found. Things like hydrothermal vents, I don't believe had been discovered yet, or they had been recently

discovered. And these are an excellent proving grounds and potentially a great example of how life might emerge or subsist on a place like Europa or Enceladus. These communities of life that live off of geothermal energy at the seafloor. That's a great example of what we think might be possible at these ocean worlds. And dragonfly luckily can build off of a lot of the amazing discoveries that Cassini made. So we have some ideas of the complexity of the organic molecules that are present on Titan. complexity of the organic molecules that are present on Titan. And so we've designed instruments that should be able to parse out from that complex chemical tapestry, pull out the bits of information that can tell us, is this environment habitable? Does it have the building blocks? And

do we potentially see evidence of biosignatures? But that's not all of what Dragonfly is going to do. We are also just pure chemists studying a new environment, pure geologists who are studying this alien world. We're going to learn so much about all different aspects of Titan, not just whether or not it has a propensity to host life, but just how it got to be the way it is and how unique or how common a world like Titan might be in the sort of universal context. Do you have any doubt that what we are learning and will learn in the future about Enceladus and Titan will help us learn more about our own pale blue dot? It is probably going to blow our minds in ways that we can't even predict now. Every time we

send something somewhere else, it requires us to mature and advance, develop these technologies that end up having some benefits here, as well as just the sheer knowledge that we'll learn. Again, we only have a sample size of one when it comes to life. And as a scientist, that's terrible. Oh, gosh, you can't make any real theories or anything based on that small of a sample size. You need at least three, right? Ideally, tens or even hundreds of examples before you can draw a line or make a claim about a trend. make a claim about a trend. And so by studying these other habitable worlds, we can see where Earth lies on the spectrum and where other places lie on the spectrum of habitability and really start to understand better the universe and our place in it.

A lot of other worlds out there waiting for us to find out more about them, aren't there, outside our solar system I'm talking about. Before we finish, I don't know where you find the time, but you obviously enjoy not just doing science, but sharing your love of it. I noted that you were in 2018 given the JPL's Bruce Murray Award, our beloved co-founder of the Planetary Society, for Excellence in Education and Public Engagement. You have a lot of these sorts of activities, these STEM activities going on. But just as an example of one that made my eyes go kind of wide, what do you do in South Korea each year? And is that still underway? Oh, gosh. Yes. So the Bruce Murray Award was a tremendous honor, and it's such a privilege to be able to work in a place where I can do this outreach and help expand the excitement, the sheer excitement and love of what I do and inspire the next generation. And I've been fortunate enough to help manage a space camp in South Korea at a Challenger Learning Center.

space camp in South Korea at a Challenger Learning Center. This is one of these places that was started by the families of the Challenger astronauts. And there are many throughout the US. There are just a few internationally. And as far as I know, I think this is the only one in Asia that's in South Korea. They've got an observatory there. It's such an amazing place. And to be able to go and teach third through sixth graders, some of the amazing things that we are able to do as scientists and as engineers, usually it's just funny. It seems to happen in the summer. Maybe I've been working in the lab and I haven't been able to get something going or, you know, the laser's broken or something. And so I go to the space camp and these kids look up at you

and they're like, you work for NASA? You're awesome. And you're like, you know what? I am awesome. This is awesome. And it just sort of, it really scratches that itch and makes me remember why I do what I do

and how incredibly lucky I am. So I love it. Unfortunately, because of the global pandemic, we haven't been able to do the camp for the last two summers, but we're really hoping to pick up again where we left off and see some of those teachers and hopefully see some of those students again and find out what they've been up to. Well, of course, you're awesome. All right, I've saved the most important question of the interview for last. And here it is. Are you still mountain unicycling? Yes, I might be. It's a really fun sport. Actually, not a lot of women do it. So women out there,

if you're interested in learning how mountain unicycling is, it's a lot of fun. It's the only thing that I have found where I have to be completely focused on what I'm doing. I can't be thinking about that, that meeting I've got to go to or that presentation I've got to work on. I have to be completely present because if you're not, if you let your mind drift, you know, you, you tend to fall pretty easily and biff it and that's no fun. So yeah, there are a lot of great trails in the area here in Southern California and I just really enjoy it. So that's my meditation in motion, I guess. Stay focused, Morgan, because we need you for many, many more years to keep

conducting and leading this research and explaining it to us as well. Thank you so much. This has just been delightful. Best of continued success with all of this work. And yes, let's do check in after that decadal survey comes out, hopefully in spring of 2022. Best of luck with that as well. Oh, that would be amazing. You're such an incredibly, you're such a wonderful outreach.

And the words are not here. Thank you so much. You're just amazing. Those words will do just fine. Thank you so much, Morgan. And by the way, happy birthday, Morgan. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society. He's been with me, wow, we're going on 19 years now of doing the show together. What? I know, I know the feeling. That's Bruce Betts coughing into your ears there, into your earbuds. Welcome. Thank you, Matt. Great to be here for the last little while. the last little while. No, no, we're going to stick around. I promise.

Because we're just having too good a time looking up at that night sky. Ooh, and I just can't get enough of your clean segues. It is cool in the evening sky right now having the two brightest planets up there. You have Venus in the west after sunset, looking super bright. And you got Jupiter over in the east, looking really bright. Saturn's to Jupiter's right, looking yellowish and not as bright. And between Jupiter, Saturn, and then over to Venus,

you got a bunch of constellations. So you got Sagittarius, the teapot of the sky in terms of what it looks like as an asterism. And you got Scorpius with the bright reddish star and Terry's. So a party in the evening sky. I had a conversation with my five-year-old grandson yesterday, and we were debating whether Venus is stuck. Because it appears to have been for months really high in that western sky. But I told him that I would ask you about this. Is Venus stuck?

I can't tell you. No, Venus is most definitely not stuck. But the way the orbits work, it has indeed been hanging out in a similar location in the sky, but it's because both Venus and Earth are moving. And so you get different patterns in the sky, depending on what's going on. Someday I'll really blow his mind and show him retrograde. Retrograde! It's going backwards. Yeah, it's just because everything's moving rather than everything's stuck. On to this week in space history. 1965, Matt, they named a show after you.

Lost in Space premiered. Danger, Will Robinson, danger. I'm found in space. That's where I'd like to find myself, actually. We'd like to find you there as well. Two amazing outer planet missions ended during this week. Galileo in 2003 and Cassini in 2017. Both crashed intentionally into the giant planets they were exploring, Jupiter and Saturn, respectively.

We move on to... I didn't mean to put random space facts. That was a good one. Clever. I like that one. Oh, yay. Finally, after 19 years. This just...

People need to know this. In orbital mechanics, there is a thing called a pork chop plot. I'm assuming some orbital dynamics guys were really hungry. They plotted something and they thought, hey, that looks like a pork chop, kind of like in the cartoons where the other character turns into a steak. But a pork chop plot is a chart that shows contours of equal characteristic energy against combinations of launch date and arrival date for interplanetary

missions. So they're kind of like fuel efficiency maps to figure out when you want to launch and when you'll get there. And it looks, if you squint and are really out of it, the plots look kind of like pork chops. This is another example of that lesson that we've been trying to teach people for years. Never, ever put your science on paper just before dinner. Oh, that's for sure. Also tends to be wrong just before you eat, but that's another story. All right, we go on to the trivia contest. And I asked you, as of September 1st, 2021, how many spacecraft are docked or visiting

the International Space Station? How'd we do, Matt? Not the biggest response we've ever had, but one of the most entertaining, I think. Here's the answer. Yeah. Here's the answer from a poet laureate, Dave Fairchild in Kansas. Northrop Grumman's Cygnus freighter takes a docking port. SpaceX has a pair of ships, the crew and cargo sort. Russia has a Soyuz and a Progress 7-8. If we send much more, they'll have to stand in line and wait. Always impressive how he works these answers. I wonder how long it takes. That's five, I believe. Is that correct? Five is indeed correct,

what's hanging out there right now. He named them all. Well, what a relief for you, Glenn Bizeau, in New Brunswick, Canada, because, Glenn, you were chosen by Random.org, and sure enough, Glenn said five ships as well. So congratulations up there in NB, Glenn. You are going to be getting yourself a Planetary Society kick asteroid, rubber asteroid. Congratulations. Like I said, we've got a whole bunch more very entertaining

stuff. I should add that Glenn says, love listening to the podcast at bedtime, but makes me forget to enter the contest the next day, LOL. Hey, glad that you had, what, insomnia this time, Glenn? Did you stay up all night? Darren Ritchie in the state of Washington says, almost wrote two dragons docking, because, you know, two of those SpaceX spacecraft, two dragons docking, which kind of puts me in a holiday mood. You get it? Two dragons talking, which kind of puts me in a holiday mood. You get it? Two dragons talking. Ola Franzen in Sweden. I count five at the given time, but my eyesight isn't the best.

I was going to say, wait for it. The pun master, Robert Klain in Arizona. Must you give us such easy questions? I ask again, soy is going to give us a tough one. This question's too easy to make progress with. Still working on that Cygnus pun. We'll get back to you on that, he says. I think he's got a pun Cygnus.

He should go to the hospital. That's very good. Right off the top of your head. I'm impressed. I'm impressed of how you read those puns flawlessly into the dialogue, but I guess, you know, you're the professional. I am a pro. 19 years, actually more.

Joseph Poutre in New Jersey. Of course, none of us can see the cloaked alien spacecraft. Keeping an eye on we evolved apes. The question is, how many are there? Mel Powell in California, there would be a sixth, but some selfish bonehead left a shopping cart in the middle of the docking port instead of returning the cart. Come on, space people, be kinder.

Oh, come on. And we'll close with this from our other major poet, Gene Lewin, in the state of Washington. Docking with the ISS requires the finesse found in ballet, but with limited amount of parking spots, they may soon need a valet. There's been mention of a parking garage within a short spacewalk. Proposed not yet reality. So far, it's only talk. So five ships are currently parked in place with a few empty docking slots. So if you want a primo port, you currently have a shot.

Well, I was unaware of those parking plans for the future of ISS. People are really thinking that through. I was too. Ballet and valet. That's the winning rhyme, I think, this week. What do you got for next time? What was the largest telescope during the 19th century? So during the 1800s, at any time during the 1800s,

what was the largest telescope by primary mirror diameter, the usual way telescopes are measured? Biggest telescope in the 19th century. Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Gosh, you know, I think I know the biggest one in the 18th century, but not the 19th. Great question. I think the answer is interesting. It will lead people in interesting directions.

You've got until Wednesday, September 22nd at 8 a.m. Pacific time. And we'll go with that asteroid again. You know, the ones from the Planetary Society. That's if you're the winner of this latest quiz from the quiz master, the chief scientist. Bruce Betts, we're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about why a question mark looks like a question mark. Thank you, and good night.

I don't know. I think it looks like a pork chop scanning on end myself. Go have lunch. He is the chief scientist of the Planetary Society who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its members who can't wait to dive into our solar system's other oceans. The water is warm and inviting at planetary.org slash join. Mark Hilverda and Jason Davis are our associate producers. Josh Doyle composed our

theme, which is arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser at Astro.