Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - The Moon, Ion Engines, and Helium 3 ...What More Could You Want?

Episode Date: October 6, 2003

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This is Planetary Radio. Hello again, friends of the solar system and space exploration. I'm Matt Kaplan. Remember a few weeks ago when Dr. Bernard Foing was our guest? The European Space Agency scientists talked about the imminent launch of the ESA's Smart One spacecraft. Well, it happened on September 27. A small group gathered at Planetary Society headquarters to watch the Ariane 5 rocket lift off on the web. Just moments after the launch, we were on the phone once again with Dr. Foying,

the Society's Director of Projects. Our regular contributor, Bruce Betts, was the first to congratulate Dr. Foying and the SmartOne team. And we very much enjoy and appreciate your talking to us at such a momentous time. Well, thank you for your interest. It was quite emotional as well here. I bet. This has been a long time coming for you, hasn't it? How long have you been working on this? Yes. Well, okay, we had started to think about the project some five years ago, but we had it really approved four years ago. We took three years to develop the spacecraft, and we had some additional time to test. And, okay, now we're starting the next step, which is, okay, being injected fully in a few minutes.

And then we will check how the spacecraft deploys the solar panels. In a few hours, we will then start to charge the batteries. And on Monday, we will pre-commission some experiments that are monitoring the ion engine. And on Tuesday morning, we will fire the ion engine. First, we make a test firing, and later we will decide, after analysis of the data, if we can fire it and then try to escape the Earth's radiation belt and then start our long journey to the Moon. Wonderful.

And how long will it be on your journey? So, yes, it will be a journey of something like 16 to 18 months. So we will start to fly by the Moon in October, November, December 2004, and then we will spiral in around the moon. We keep you posted about the next steps of this exploration, and it was very nice to hear that there is interest from your side, and I wish the best to everybody from the Planet Society and your guests as well. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Thank you, Dr. Kong. Okay, thank you. All the best. Bye-bye. We're happy to report that all is well with SMART-1. Its ion, or electric propulsion engine, is working perfectly as it slowly accelerates the probe toward the day when it will break out of Earth orbit, headed for the Moon. I'll be back with more right after this visit with Emily.

My goodness, everyone's gone to the moon. I'll be back with more right after this visit with Emily. My goodness, everyone's gone to the moon. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, I've heard of a plan to mine helium-3 on the moon in order to power fusion reactors for space exploration. Is this possible? The possibility of using helium-3 to make electricity in fusion reactors for space exploration. Is this possible? The possibility of using helium-3 to make electricity in fusion reactors has been known to scientists in the United States and elsewhere

for more than 20 years. Work in this area has revealed that fusion devices operating on helium-3 would be cleaner, safer, and in many cases more economical than those using deuterium, which is what most fusion engineers are currently focusing on. But the main problem with the use of helium-3, an uncommon isotope of helium in which the atom's nucleus contains a neutron in addition to the usual two protons, is that there may be no more than one ton of helium-3 on the entire Earth. One ton of helium-3 would only provide enough electrical energy to power

the United States for about 10 days. Fortunately, samples of lunar soil from United States and Soviet missions to the Moon revealed that there were considerable amounts of Helium-3 on the ancient surface of the Moon, deposited there over 4 billion years of bombardment by the solar wind. In fact, there may be as much as a million tons of helium-3 in the top three meters of the lunar soil. But would it really be feasible to go to the moon and mine it? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out. We had hoped to bring you a follow-up interview regarding SMART-1 with Dr. David Southwood, Director of Science for the European Space Agency.

Dr. Southwood regrets that an urgent matter prevents him from joining us on this week's show, but he looks forward to talking with us very soon. When we looked at the Planetary Radio archives for a suitable stand-in, we found our April 2003 conversation with Mark Raymond. Mark was one of the project managers for the only other successful spacecraft whose main engine ran on solar electricity. Do you remember its name?

The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics presented an award a few days ago. The Space Systems Award is presented, quote, to recognize outstanding achievements in the architecture, analysis, design, and implementation of space systems, unquote. This year, it went to the team that designed, built, and flew a revolutionary spacecraft called Deep Space One. Mark Raymond was project manager for the Deep Space One mission at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Pasadena, California. Congratulations, Mark. Thank you very much. Thanks for having me on your show. Now, was I correct in saying you were a project manager, or should I

have said a project manager? I was a project manager. I worked on the mission from the beginning, but I didn't become project manager until we were in operations. So there were two other project managers before me. I see. Deep Space One was not your typical spacecraft mission designed to do a lot of science, even though it did get some science done. You're absolutely right. The point of the mission was to test high-risk advanced technologies

that are important for future space science missions. So NASA wants to have an aggressive, exciting program of space science missions, but it requires new technologies to do those, and new technologies are risky. Deep Space One and the other missions of the New Millennium Program take the risks so that those future missions don't have to. So in a way, you were almost the opposite of other missions we're familiar with, where people want to be very conservative and go with hardware that they are pretty darn sure is going to last the duration of the mission, let it complete its objective. That was not the idea here.

You're right. On other missions, the way that you accomplish your science is to do something that somebody else did before. Well, Deep Space One is now the mission that did it before. So by testing these risky technologies, we protect the future missions from incurring the cost and risk that would penalize missions that would have to take these chances. If a technology works on Deep Space One, then a future mission can use it. And if it doesn't work, that's also a success because a future mission can avoid it and in either case avoid the cost and risk. Now you had, I have read, 12 groundbreaking technologies.

I think it's safe to say that one in particular got maybe more than its fair share of attention, although it was pretty darn important. In fact, maybe even by getting more attention, it got its fair share. It was ion propulsion, which I think most people would agree was the most exciting technology. Right out of science fiction, I think this probably applies to many people, certainly it does to me. The first time I ever heard of it was in science fiction. Yeah, me too.

But one of the rewards of working on a mission like this is turning that science fiction into science fact. Deep Space One tested the technology. It worked beautifully, and now it's available at low risk for future missions to use. I suppose we need to spend a minute or two doing a little ion energy, excuse me, an ion engine primer here

for folks who aren't familiar with the technology. Let me remind you first how a regular engine works. You take a gas and you heat it up or you put it under pressure and you push it out of a rocket nozzle, and the action of the gas leaving causes a reaction that pushes the spacecraft in the other direction. Ion propulsion works the same way, but instead of heating the gas up or putting it under pressure,

we ionize it, which means we give it a little electric charge. And when it has an electric charge, you can accelerate it with a voltage. So we use the gas xenon, which is like helium or neon but heavier. We ionize it and then shoot it out of the spacecraft by putting a voltage on it, and that causes the xenon to shoot out at very, very high speed, in fact, about ten times the speed of the exhaust of conventional propellants, and so that causes a relatively large push back on the spacecraft.

Now, even with that amazing velocity of these ions coming out of this engine, there still isn't very much coming out. You're not talking about a lot of thrust. You're exactly right. It's very efficient, which means it doesn't take much propellant. But by the same token, we only flow a very small amount of propellant. It takes several days to consume a pound of propellant. And so the thrust is extremely gentle. It's comparable to what you would feel if you held a pound of propellant. And so the thrust is extremely gentle. It's comparable to what you would feel if you held a piece of paper in your hand. That paper would push on your hand

as much as the thruster pushes on the spacecraft. But over time, the effectiveness builds up, and instead of thrusting for a few seconds or a few minutes at a time, we thrust for months or even years at a time. And so, in fact, that's the exact comparison I was going to make. You think of the incredible power of the chemical rockets that drive the space shuttle, but after a few moments or minutes, they're done with, whereas yours is literally designed to go for months.

That's right. Conventional systems put the pedal to the metal for a few minutes, and then they coast for years and years. Using ion propulsion, it's what I like to call acceleration with patience. Ultimately, you can get to very high speed, but it takes a while. And one of the purposes for testing it on Deep Space One was to show that this really works as well as the theory said it would, and indeed it does. There had been, I believe, some very small ion engines used as thrusters or something on some previous spacecraft, but this was the first application of ion technology for the main propulsion for a spacecraft, right? That's right. This is the first time ion propulsion had been used as primary propulsion,

that is actually to get the spacecraft someplace, ion propulsion had been used as primary propulsion, that is actually to get the spacecraft someplace, as opposed to making small changes in its orbit or helping it hold its position. We should really spend a little bit of time talking about some of those other technologies and about some of the challenges that you faced in this mission and a glorious success as well as you visited a comet. But I think maybe what we'll do is take a quick break and then come back and continue this conversation with Mark Raymond about the Deep Space One spacecraft. Planetary Radio will continue 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. You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in the Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387.

And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments at our exciting and informative website, planetarysociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Mark Raymond was a project manager for the Deep Space One mission, which has just received a very prestigious award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Mark is with us on Planetary Radio. We spent a few minutes talking about the ion engine, perhaps the technology that was most worthy of getting a lot of attention from this groundbreaking mission.

But you had a lot of other interesting technologies you were testing out, didn't you, Mark? Yes, we did. I think actually all of them were pretty neat. But another one that I think is particularly interesting is an artificial intelligence system that determines the spacecraft's location in the solar system, where it is, where it's going, without human intervention. And if it finds it's not on the correct course, it can change its course by adjusting the thrusting with the ion propulsion system. And of course, we don't have a solar system GPS. Everybody here on Earth is familiar with GPS.

But the spacecraft managed to do it, even out in the solar system, by looking at distant asteroids and comparing their positions to the even more distant stars. That allowed the spacecraft, in a way that's perhaps a little too complicated to explain in this brief interview, but that allowed the spacecraft to figure out where it was. And this is a very powerful technology because, as with all the technologies on Deep Space One, we want to conduct more ambitious missions. And when we think about missions that will be far away in the solar system, where it's inconvenient for them to get help from Earth or on the far side of a planet where it's impossible or where they have to respond quickly,

the ability to do it by itself is very, very important to illustrate the effectiveness of combining this autonomous navigation with ion propulsion compared to what we could do before Deep Space One, this would be like having your car find its own way from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., arrive in a designated parking place, and do it all while getting 300 miles per gallon. That's the kind of advancement that just these two technologies offer. And again, as you said, we have 12 on DS-1. What a great analogy. Do you want to mention any of those other technologies before we talk a bit more about the actual mission?

Well, we had a number that reduced the mass and power consumption of spacecraft with microelectronics. We had some that combined different science instruments into very small packages. Again, the purpose of that was to test these instruments to make sure they worked, but then as long as we had them on board when we had the extended mission and went on for our bonus encounter with a comet, we were able to use those technologies to return truly a wealth of scientific data as a bonus. And I read that you did some interesting things with the solar cells that powered the probe. That's right.

Each set of cells had a little lens above it. In fact, there were 720 lenses focusing sunlight down onto the solar cells to let the solar rays weigh less and yet produce more power. And that worked flawlessly from the beginning of the mission to the end. You made reference a moment ago to your sort of bonus mission to a comet. When you launched in 1998, did you guys have any idea you were going to be getting the closest look yet at a comet nucleus? Well, again, the point of the primary mission was simply to test the technologies.

In fact, I shouldn't say simply. It was an extremely aggressive and ambitious mission. In fact, I shouldn't say simply. It was an extremely aggressive and ambitious mission. But we had in mind that if things went well, we would request that NASA extend the mission. But there was certainly no assurance because it was a very, very high-risk mission, depending on technologies that were chosen because they're risky. But the primary mission exceeded its success criteria.

NASA extended it, and we flew on for another more than two years to get to the comet. By the time our aged spacecraft had gotten there, almost every subsystem had some kind of problem because the mission wasn't designed to last so long. And yet, it survived that bold adventure at the comet and really produced some terrifically exciting results. And we should mention that that was Comet Borelli and that on a future edition of Planetary Radio, we're going to talk with your colleague, Dr. Robert Nelson, who was responsible for a lot of the science that was done by Deep Space One. That will be as soon as that research is published, which I guess is being reviewed right now.

You talked about how systems started to have some problems on the way to Comet Borelli. You had one major scare, didn't you? We certainly did. The primary mission ended in September of 1999. Then we set sail for the comet. That November, a critical device failed, and it deprived the spacecraft of its knowledge of how it was oriented in the zero gravity of space. And it was such a catastrophic failure that everybody's expectation was that we should just terminate the mission

and retire the spacecraft, let it rest on its laurels. But one of the philosophies of the Deep Space One team was, if it isn't possible, it isn't worth doing. So we actually managed to rescue the spacecraft. It took seven months, and we did it from almost a million times farther away than the International Space Station is from the surface of the Earth. We reprogrammed the computer. We developed a new way to fly the spacecraft, got it going again, and it was really a remarkable effort. reprogrammed the computer, we developed a new way to fly the spacecraft, got it going again,

and it was really a remarkable effort. And I can tell you when the Star Tracker failed, we certainly didn't expect that that spacecraft was ever going to see a comet. But the rescue was successful, and the mission continued on beautifully. Amazing accomplishment. We only have a couple of minutes left. You have compared Deep Space One to the old X-15 rocket plane, another groundbreaking tester of many technologies.

Do you stand by that? Yes, I do. Again, the point was pave the way for future missions, and just as the X-15 and other aircraft in the X program developed the technologies and taught us the lessons that we needed to learn in order to undertake more ambitious missions of the future. Deep Space One and the other missions of the New Millennium Program are doing the same thing. Mark, let's pretend it's the Academy Awards. You just picked up the Oscars.

Is there anybody else you want to mention as part of getting this or earning this award from the AIAA? There were many organizations involved besides JPL. Spectrum Astro Incorporated was the contractor that worked with us on the development of the spacecraft. It was actually more a partner than a contractor. There were too many organizations probably to mention that participated in the development of the technologies and their incorporation on the spacecraft. So it was really a large team effort derived from private industry, academia, and NASA.

Mark, what are you on to now? I'm now working on a mission called Dawn, a new discovery mission, which is going to go to the asteroid belt and make a detailed investigation of several, in fact, the largest asteroids. And it's one of the many beneficiaries of Deep Space One, because a mission like this would be truly impossible without ion propulsion. And so Dawn is really benefiting from DS-1's groundbreaking work. Well, we will wish you as great a success with that new mission as you had with Deep

Space One. And thank you again for joining us on Planetary Radio. Thank you. I enjoyed talking with you. Mark Raymond was a project manager for the Deep Space One mission, which has just received a very prestigious award from the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics. And that interview with Mark first aired last April here on Planetary Radio. I'll return with Bruce and this week's What's Up right after this return visit from Emily, who's still digging up that helium-3 on the moon.

I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. Can we really mine helium-3 from the moon? According to Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmidt, we can. The only geologist ever to land on the moon, Schmidt has lately been proposing to solve the Earth's energy needs by mining the helium-3 from the moon. His business plan involves setting up mining machines on the Moon that would crawl across the lunar maria, scooping up the top three meters of the soil

and baking it to release the Helium-3 trapped inside. It may sound far-fetched, but if Helium-3 reactors really are developed, the incredible energy return from a fusion reaction would make mining lunar helium economically feasible. Of course, using the Moon as a gigantic strip mine to serve Earth's ever-growing energy needs carries ethical issues. Who decides what activities are acceptable on the Moon or any of the other bodies in the Solar System? Find out the answer to that question in next week's Q&A. 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 once again for What's Up with Planetary Society Director of Projects, Bruce Betts. Hello, Bruce. Hey there. Hi there. Oh there. So, it's been a good week, I think. It's been a good week for the solar system. It is. It's been a wonderful week for the solar system. Everything's still there. And we're happy about it. And in fact, you can even see some of those things.

And we're going back to the moon, as we heard earlier tonight. We are indeed. Congratulations to the European Space Agency. We're off to the moon, which is good because you can see the moon up in the night sky. Yeah. And, in fact, if you look at the moon Monday, Monday night, October 6th, you can see Mars right near the moon. The very night that this program begins to air. So we hope that's when you're listening, folks.

Don't go out yet. Wait till we hear the rest of what Bruce has to say. We're almost done here. Then go out and look at the moon and Mars. It'll still be there. Mars still very, very bright in the evening sky, still brighter than anything else, but will fade rapidly in the next month or so. If you're really looking for a wacky challenge, try to find Uranus.

Look above Mars by 1.4 degrees, in other words, a little above it, and basically you'll only be able to see it naked eye if you're in a really dark location, but binoculars might bring it out. But it's tough. It's a tough one. But I like to give you a challenge once in a while. I've got a tough one for you. Somebody with a moderate-sized telescope like yours truly, would I

see Uranus through that telescope as a disk? You would actually see it as a happy face. I had to ask. All right, what next? You could also see all sorts of things before dawn. You can see Jupiter. You can also, if you look low on the horizon in the east,

you might even be able to see Mercury, but very low on the horizon. Jupiter's up above it in the east before dawn. We're getting lots of planets coming out. Saturn actually rises in the middle of the night and is high in the southeast before dawn. We're getting lots of planets coming out. Saturn actually rises in the middle of the night and is high in the southeast before dawn. Excellent. I'm looking forward to those big guys coming back out and having some good observation time.

This week in space history, which in addition to now adding, well, I was last week in space history, had a Smart One launch that we'll talk about next year. But this week in space history, on October 11, 1994, we had another spacecraft burning up in an atmosphere. In this case, Magellan burned up in Venus' atmosphere after a very successful radar mapping mission of Venus.

And with that, let's go on to random space facts. Did you know, Matt, that Pluto, at its average distance from the sun, receives only 1,600th as much sunlight as the Earth does? Wow. So they can use a really low SPF factor on Pluto. Very low. Very, very low. In fact, they use water. The problem is it freezes out so darn quickly. All right.

On to... Shall we move on to our trivia contest? Yeah, why don't we? What was the question last week? I have no idea. Oh, come on. Yes, you do. All right. Our trivia question last week was, of course, what's the smoothest object in the solar system? Ah. And we had... Smoothest body.

Smoothest body. And we're not talking to anybody you'd see on television. Even on Fox. I probably should have been more specific. We really were looking for a planetary-type body, a planet, a satellite, something like that. Well, most of our entrants did figure it out, and they got the answer right. We have this from past winner Kyle Tinsley. Jupiter's moon Europa is the smoothest object in the solar system. He's right, but he went on to say,

coming in a close second is the amazing Bruce Betts, the ladies' man. He's a bad mother. Shut your mouth. Anyway, but Kyle, you didn't win this week. Our winner, whose answer was also Europa, Robert Miller, someone we haven't heard from before, at least who hasn't won before. Congratulations, Robert, of Orange, California. You are our winner this week.

I don't know if you're getting a 3-D Mars poster or a calendar, but we'll figure it out, and you're going to get it. And once again, congratulations. Congratulations. Yes, indeed. Europa, smoothest body in the solar system. And I'll leave off all the other possible jokes. At least for the moment.

Now we can move on to some others because we'll move on to our new trivia contest. For this, we head to our sister planet, Venus. My question for you out there in radio listening land is, what do all the feature names on venus have in common what do all the feature names on venus have in common give us your answer go to planetary.org follow the links to planetary radio i will only say that i didn't know and you told me and when you when you hear it you can think oh, oh, yeah, that makes sense. And I won't say any more than that.

I will say no more. How can people enter? Did you just say that? I did indeed. I thought so. But I'm thinking they still can just go to planetary.org, follow the links to Planetary Radio, and any other links you find are interesting. But the links to Planetary Radio will get you to the entry for this particular contest. I want to quickly mention one other contest we have going, which is a Mars art contest,

which you can enter also from the homepage of planetary.org. Look for Mars art contest link. And it is open to all ages. Bruce, when are we going to hear from Biff and Sandy again? I mean, they've had diary entries on the website, but it's kind of nice to hear them talk to us. We will be hearing from them very soon, possibly as early as next week. But you can check up on the Astrobot Diaries at redrovergoestomars.org slash astrobots. Excellent.

You can hear the tales of them headed off towards Mars. They've been very busy and haven't been able to connect by voice. Biff's had a lot of video games to play, and Fanny's just absorbed with her haiku and the manual. Well, I hope they'll take a few minutes with us next week or soon after. Bruce, we're done. Good night. Well, thank you, and look up in the night sky and think about... What do you think about, Matt?

I think about candy. Look up in the night sky, think about... What do you think about, Matt? I think about candy. Look up in the night sky, think about candy. Thank you. Good night. Bruce Betts is the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. He joins us each week here on Planetary Radio. Join us here next week for another edition of Planetary Radio. Same time,

same station, same website. Take care, everyone.