Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Tim Spahr of the Minor Planet Center

Episode Date: July 8, 2013

There’s a place to go when you find a space rock headed our way, or headed any which way. Tim Spahr directs the Minor Planet Center, the global clearinghouse for all information about asteroids, comets and other relatively small bodies like moons.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You've just found an asteroid that threatens Earth. Who are you going to call? This week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, and I'll tell you who to call. It's the Minor Planet Center, the global nerve center for cataloging space rocks and dirty snowballs, including the ones that cross the path of our home planet. We'll talk with its director, Tim Spahr.

You'll also hear from Bruce Betts. And Bill Nye has an explosive commentary, literally. Emily Lakdawalla is still on vacation, so we welcome back Planetary Society contributing editor Jason Davis. Jason, a happy post-4th of July to you. I know that you were sort of saluting the holiday with your piece that came out on July 3rd called A Patriotic Return to Space, which is mostly the very good news that we all enjoyed when Discovery rocketed back up there.

But it also brought me back to that day, hard to believe it was 27 years ago, one of the saddest of my life when the Challenger blew up moments after lifting off. I was looking up the photos of those wonderful people who died in that accident. The grief of that day all came back to me. It's a very sad thing. It was the single largest loss of life in a spaceflight accident and the first time America had lost any astronauts during an actual mission. And it happened in front of the entire world on live TV, all the schoolchildren that were watching to see Krista McAuliffe. And it was really a cost of soul-searching, I think, among the American people. So take us to about two and three-quarters years later, and we're back at Kennedy Space Center.

Yes. So NASA responds to this by redesigning the solid rocket boosters that caused Challenger's accident. They overhaul the managerial system, and we finally have Discovery back on the launch pad. Extra safety measures in place. The crew are wearing pressure suits. And we finally get the shuttle off the ground for the first time since the Challenger disaster. And it was a huge moment for America. Hugh Harris, the public affairs officer at the time, he says Americans return to space as Discovery clears the tower. The media coverage around the time was similar. There were American flags everywhere. And it was just a real sense of patriotism and pride to see Americans get back into space.

You note that in the very last line of your piece. What did you write? I said America loves a good comeback story, and I think that that is exactly what happened here. You know, the country grieved after Challenger was lost, but then that was replaced immediately with a sense to move on. And, you know, Americans kind of love that come-from-behind feeling, and that's what happened here. It's a July 3rd piece, a blog entry by Jason Davis, contributing editor to the Planetary Society website at planetary.org. Filling in this week, once again, for Emily Lakdawalla, who's away on vacation.

Jason, thanks so much. Great job with these pieces. Thanks for filling in. Yeah, it was my pleasure, Matt. Thank you. Bill Nye is next, but first, here's something else Jason reported on last week. It's July 2nd, and we're in Kazakhstan, where a Russian Proton M rocket, loaded with three expensive satellites, is about to experience a launch catastrophe. Bill just goes to show space is hard. I'll say, I mean, how many of those rockets have they launched? Dozens and dozens. They send them to the International Space Station, the cargo, everything. And even now, they had an enormous problem. It might also show you, Dr. Kaplan, that if you stop supporting, if you're a government and you stop supporting your space program, you try to,

let's say, cut corners. Stuff goes wrong and it's catastrophic. The stakes are really high. When you light the fuse on one of those things spiritually, you're committed. If any one thing isn't working, you're just, you're wasting all those resources. And of course, it's very dangerous. And perhaps in that vein, although much happier news, was this other recent story that we saw about lots of commercial spacecraft, satellites, this other recent story that we saw about lots of commercial spacecraft satellites adopting a technology that was really pioneered because we wanted to go places like asteroids and mars and things like that solar electric propulsion yeah yes so you take energy from the sun onto solar panels you charge up an electric grid and then you shoot xenon plasma, the gas atoms that have had their

electrons completely dissociated. And they go flying out the back so fast that they give the spacecraft the nudge it needs. And so, yeah, this would not exist at all without investment in deep space exploration, trying to rendezvous with asteroids especially. And so who knows where this is going to lead, as you point out. When you start using ideas that were developed to go very far and you start using them up close, it shows you, as you point out, that the technology is mature. And it's lowering the cost of space exploration so that we can include more the human population in the great adventure that is space. I know I'm speaking in platitudes, aphorisms, in terms of phrase, but I'm not kidding. Space exploration brings out the best in us. And so this Russian rocket crash, it shows you how important it is to continue investing.

And the solar electric propulsion, it's not a resurgence, a surgence, Electric propulsion, it's not a resurgence, a surgence, shows you that advancements, you never know where it's going to lead. Yeah, absolutely. When you invest in it, you don't know what benefits will accrue, but they do. They do. I think we may be the first to pose that juxtaposition. And by the way, I want to thank you for the advancement, the promotion to a PhD. Total respect. Let's work together, Matt, to dare I say it, change the world.

And he is the CEO of the Planetary Society. Thank you, Bill. It's always a pleasure. Thank you, Matt. We're going to move on now to talking to someone who's been advising, helping out the Planetary Society to pick our Shoemaker Neo Grant winners protecting this planet. That's coming up in just a moment when we talk to Tim Spahr. Timothy Spahr knows what it takes to discover objects in our solar system,

which explains his high respect for the other astronomers who contact him on a regular basis. Actually, you may be shocked by just how many observers he and his colleagues at the MPC hear from. MPC, that's the Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. Tim, it's a pleasure, and about time we got you on Planetary Radio. Thank you for joining us by Skype.

Thanks very much for having me. It's a real honor to do this, and a little shout-out to all of the amateur astronomy community that might be listening. Big fans of you guys. Oh, listen, I hope that a lot of them tune in and get to talk to you directly this way, although they are in touch with you on a regular basis. We're going to talk more about that and the role of amateur astronomers. But first, tell us a little bit about the Minor Planet Center. I was very interested to see, for one thing, that your operating budget comes from this NASA grant. But the MPC really serves the entire world, doesn't it? Yes, that's correct. The MPC is the world's data collection and distribution center for all minor planet and comet observations. And the way I phrase this to people is, hey,

if you discover an asteroid, you need to talk to us. So the Minor Planet Center has been in that role at least since the 1970s in Cambridge, Massachusetts. And there's history all the way back into the 1930s and 40s at the University of Cincinnati. So it's a long running international operation. How many calls, they're not calls, I suppose, how many contacts do you get on a typical day from both professional and amateur astronomers? Well, it's interesting you ask that question, because we've been keeping track of that now now so that we can run reports on a daily basis. And we get observations from literally dozens of people every day in many different countries. Just by way of summary, the first monthly summary that we generated here, in the last month, we received over half a million observations.

Oh, my gosh. From around the world. Yes. Now, I knew it would be a big number, but I wasn't expecting that many. That's got to say something about the vitality of these efforts to find and track these little objects. Look, having been in the field for over 20 years now, it is absolutely staggering to me how much it's changed, how fast it's changed, and how much worldwide interest there is in the problem. It's really phenomenal.

Why do you think you've seen this tremendous growth? Well, the growth in the observation submission and the discovery process, there are a lot of angles on that. The principal reason is interest. People are interested in this problem. When there's interest, you have smart people, be them professionals or amateurs, that decide they want to work on it, and you have money flowing from governments to people that study the objects and discover them. For example, NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, which does fund the Minor Planet Center, as well as a lot of the surveys in the United States, the budget for that is much higher than it was. In fact, in 1992, there was no budget. There was no Near-Earth Object Observations

Program. They were beginning the program, and it was formally funded in 1998. Boy, certainly lots of evidence that this is a very successful program in that case. I would guess that events like what happened over Chelyabinsk, Russia last February, have not hurt business. Oh, no. And first of all, I want to make clear that while that was an exciting event, it was also very frightening. And I'm sorry for people that were injured in that. It's a little tough sometimes when you see that, because we'd love to be able to do something about that. But finding every single small object will take much, much more money than we're currently talking about. And this was a relatively small object that did that

amount of damage. It was certainly a nice wake-up call for a lot of people who hadn't quite gotten it yet. How many objects are currently in the database? All right. So in the Minor Planet Center database, we distinguish between near-Earth objects, which are objects capable of making close approaches to the Earth. Close for us is sort of 25 or 30 million miles to the Earth. And objects that don't come that close. The entire Minor Planet Center catalog is about 800,000 asteroids and comets. And of those, we had a milestone. We've got the 10,000th near-Earth object was just discovered recently. From what I've read, there are a lot more of those near-Earth objects out there waiting

for us to discover them? Yes, most definitely. At the level of one kilometer in diameter, there's only a few dozen objects left to discover in the near-earth asteroid population. But as we go smaller, there's tens of thousands to discover and even hundreds of thousands at the sort of 50 meter size range. So we have a lot of work to do. How important are the contributions by amateurs to this, not just discovery, but the tracking of these objects? Do they play an important role? Yes. I want to make clear that the amateurs play an important role in this, although I also want to be honest in that that role for discovery and follow-up for the orbits is diminishing. Now, it's not because there's something wrong with the amateurs. It's because the professional observatories are receiving larger bunches or

bits of funding than they have in the past. And so you have very large telescopes. The Catalina Sky Survey has a 1.5-meter telescope. Pan-STARRS has a 1.8-meter telescope. telescope. Pan-STARRS has a 1.8 meter telescope. And with large professional level funding and grants and instrumentation, it's very hard then for the amateurs to contribute in the discovery process. Where they do contribute is in orbit refinement. And in particular now, the physical observation area, light curves especially. So this is where you study the object, how its brightness varies, and then you can tell how fast it's rotating. Sometimes you can get some physical property information from that. Amateurs are doing a fantastic job in that area right now, and they will likely do more. More from Tim Spahr, director of the Minor Planet Center,

is just a minute away. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here, CEO of the Planetary Society, speaking to you from PlanetFest 2012, the celebration of the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity landing on the surface of Mars. This is taking us our next steps in following the water and the search for life, to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from, and are we alone? to understand those two deep questions. Where did we come from? And are we alone? This is the most exciting thing that people do.

And together, we can advocate for planetary science and, dare I say it, change the worlds. Hi, this is Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society. We've spent the last year creating an informative, exciting, and beautiful new website. Your place in space is now open for business. You'll find a whole new look with lots of images, great stories, my popular blog, and new blogs from my colleagues and expert guests. And as the world becomes more social, we are too, giving you the opportunity to join in through Facebook, Google+, Twitter, and much more. It's all at planetary.org.

I hope you'll check it out. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. Millions of asteroids and comets, most of them waiting to be found. We're lucky to have astronomer Tim Spahr and his colleagues at the Minor Planet Center to keep track of them all and to keep everyone informed of their whereabouts. Tim directs the MPC from the Cambridge offices of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. The center's work is under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union and is funded by NASA. How much of a role has technology played in particularly amateurs' capabilities in this area? I mean, I'm thinking in particular of cameras, CCD cameras.

The technological development is really amazing. For some listeners out there that might be my age or older, when I started discovering asteroids in the mid-1990s, I was still using film to do it, even in a professional capacity. And so now we've switched over to where the CCDs are charged. Couple devices are affordable for amateurs, and they have really changed the game. Going from trying to measure things on film, which required a measuring engine,

to off-the-shelf packages that allow you to reduce digital data in real time, there's really no comparison. The technological advances have put the ability to do this work in the hands of amateur astronomers. Now, you won't be surprised, of course, to know that I also want to talk to you a little bit about the Shoemaker-Neo, our Near-Earth Object Program grant program, operated by the Planetary Society, which we were all thrilled, of course, when you agreed to be the new coordinator of that program. What does that job actually entail?

We received the proposals from you, from the Planetary Society, to, you know, every couple of years there's an announcement. People propose to do work in the field of near-Earth objects, be it in the discovery or follow-up or physical characterization area. We take the proposals and see which ones sort of rise to the top of the pile, which ones we think will provide the most bang for the buck, and we push forward our recommendations. In this round of the awards that were just handed out a few months ago, actually, there's this really interesting group. They are from various places around the world, although the majority are from the U.S. I'm looking at people in particular like Robert Holmes, who's been on this show a couple of times, from the Astronomical Research

Institute in Illinois. He was a four-time winner. Always amazes me when I talk to these guys. Their level of dedication. They are out there every clear night, and they don't get a cent for doing this work. Well, in the case of Bob Holmes, I have known him since about 2005 or 2006. I can't remember exactly. And he started off as just an amateur. The next amateur astronomer contacted me saying, hey, how can I help out?

I helped him. Pretty soon he was doing a good job. He's actually funded in part by NASA now for this work from the same pot of money that funds the Minor Planet Center. You know, I'd forgotten that. I'd completely forgotten. And also that he has a lot of educational activities underway. Oh, yes. That group links up with schools from all over the world. Basically, what they're doing is helping high school kids understand the problem and do a little bit of surveying for asteroids in the existing data sets.

And then Bob also taps into amateurs that are skilled at doing the data reduction from all over the world. And so it is really, really an amazing project. And I like to point out to people that this field changes so fast, even for me, that it's tough to keep up. Here is someone that I did not know six or seven years ago who is now the world's leader in terms of the orbit improvement of near-Earth asteroids. So the Planetary Society, fairly small organization, this is not a government

funded program. The grants that we hand out to these individual and groups of either smaller professional astronomy organizations or amateurs, they would be barely pocket change in the world of NASA. But they really do seem to make a big difference to these folks. At least that's what we hear. I mean, is that what you get as well? Oh, yes. It's actually a huge difference that it makes. Most of the people were coming in saying, hey,

I need a spot of money to buy a camera or to improve my telescope. And once you get up to that level where they've got a professional grade camera, which can be purchased for a few thousand dollars, this enables them to do really high quality physical observations. A lot of the groups right now are doing light curves, which requires a great amount of skill. And it also requires a little technology. And once they break that technology barrier, they're able to contribute in a great way. And very importantly, the near-Earth asteroids that are discovered, there's generally a narrow window in which you can characterize them through a rotation period. We have these groups of people that observe the objects right after they're discovered, they get the light curve,

and then they are responsible for providing the scientific community that information that is hard to get any other way. They get that information to you, and it gets corroborated, and then part of your job, right, is to share this with everybody else in the community. Yes. So the Minor Planet Center is required to publish all of the astrometric positions of near-Earth asteroids that come into our office in less than 24 hours. So we've got to have a really robust computer system set up. For the people that are doing the physical observations and providing the light curves, the Minor Planet Center actually hosts a database and distributes that information to people that ask for it.

A lot of people will publish in the literature and then contact us and provide us with the light curve, so it's really a beautiful system. There are lots of amateur astronomers, and professional astronomers for that matter, in our audience, but plenty of people who are not. I just wonder if there is a public site, someplace where anybody could go to be able to track some of this work as this data flows into the MPC. Yeah, the Minor Planet Center website is available to the public. I will tell everyone that we're redoing that and we're going to have a much different page coming live within

the next few months. There is also JPL's Near Earth Object Program Office. Their website has all sorts of good information for the public. So there's plenty out there, and it's really easy for the public to keep track of how many discoveries there are. And the MPC has a Facebook page and a Twitter feed, and whenever anything is discovered that's going to make a close approach to the Earth, we tweet that out and we put a little blurb on the Facebook page. I have seen that Twitter feed and we'll share a lot of this stuff. We'll put it up on the show page that people can get to from planetary.org slash radio. Thank you so much for joining us on Planetary Radio. Thanks so much for having me and invite me back anytime. You bet. Tim Spahr, he's an American astronomer who directs the Minor Planet Center, as you heard, the MPC, which is part of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It operates out of a grant provided by NASA. Well-spent money, I would say. He doesn't just run this place. He also does this work. He's got lots of asteroids that he has discovered. He's credited as a co-discoverer of one satellite of Jupiter and one of Saturn. He also has found two periodic comets, and he's got one of these named after him, 2975 Spar.

Was that a birthday present, Tim? No, it was close to a birthday present, but that was named by Gareth Williams of the Minor Planet Center back when I was just a young chap working at the Catalina Sky Survey. Well, happy birthday regardless. Anyway, that's Tim Spahr, and we'll talk to him again someday here on Planetary Radio. In the meantime, we're going to talk to somebody else who loves to work in this area. It's our own planetary scientist, Bruce Betts, who will be dropping in in a few moments for this week's edition of What's Up.

Bruce Spetz is once again on the Skype line for this week's edition of What's Up. He's going to tell us about the night sky, and we're going to give away another one of those new, new, new Planetary Radio t-shirts. Have you seen the design yet? Finally, no thanks to you. I still don't have it. I mean, they don't give it to me either, so you're not being singled out. I want to get one to wear. I'd like to wear it on my vacation that starts essentially right after we record this. It does look good. Good.

After all my complaining, it does look good and it does not feature a terrible picture of me, which is what feared you were doing no no they turned me down for that not that there are very many terrible pictures so few what's up venus still looking fabulous dominating low in the west shortly after sunset looking like a super bright star and on the 10th and on the 11th, the crescent moon will be in the same part of the sky with Venus. And Saturn is up in the evening in the southwest, much dimmer, but still standing out as a bright-looking star that looks kind of yellowish. On to this week in space history. Hard to believe it's been five years since Messenger made its first flyby of Mercury. It then went into orbit three years later,

and it's been cranking out awesome Mercury data and mapping the whole planet since then. I continue to see great reports based on the data from that spacecraft. Still doing a great job. On to... Space fact! My precious space fact. My precious. Space fact.

The interstellar medium, also called the ISM, is the space between the stars within a galaxy. And it's on average by mass about 1% dust with the respion gas and plasma and other stuff. Wait a minute. Really? 1% dust? I thought it was like 99.999% nothing. By mass. Ah, okay. Thank you for clarifying that. Yes, it is really, really, really, really empty.

It's a whole lot of nothing in general by density and, yeah, a whole lot of nothing. But by mass, if you gather together with a really big vacuum cleaner, all the stuff that is there, then it's about 1% dust by mass. Speaking of vacuum cleaners, what a great segue. Oh, I know. Planet Vac, you've got, I want to refer folks to a couple of entries in your blog at planetary.org, July 1 and July 3, about that great project that the Planetary Society is helping out with from Honeybee Robotics.

Just a quick mention there, something to take a look at, vacuuming up not the interstellar medium, but stuff, dirt on other planets and moons and things like that. Yep, trying to test out the process. It's underway. For more information, check out planetary.org what a clever segue ah yeah that was good it was almost like it was planned almost and it wasn't

keep it up so on to a trivia contest we asked you when did the first guitar go to space and on board what spacecraft how'd we do, Matt? This stumped a lot of people because the numbers went down. That and probably the 4th of July holiday. And I hope all of you had a wonderful one. It turns out that at least three guitars have gone into space. A couple much more recently. But the first one, farther back than I would have expected,

is this what you came up with? It's what Ed Lupin, Edward Lupin, down in first one, farther back than I would have expected, is this what you came up with? It's what Ed Lupin, Edward Lupin, down in San Diego, California, came up with. Ed, by the way, has not won for about a year and a half, so congratulations, Ed. That new t-shirt is yours. He said on August 10, 1978, the unmanned Soviet spacecraft Progress 3 delivered a guitar to the Salyut 6 space station because you had a couple of strumming cosmonauts, apparently, on the Salyut. You did indeed, and I was surprised it was that far back. I had Salyut 7, but other than that, you know, it's still some early space station. Acoustic guitar, yeah, and then there have been more since then, as I guess you mentioned. I was surprised how early and how many guitars have been up there. Yeah, next we should talk about when

the first drum kit will go in space. Three guitars, a drum kit, we're ready. We got a band. We'll try to start pushing that for priorities headed to the International Space Station. Good, that should be a top planetary society priority. All right. What do you got for next time? Yeah, you go ahead and bring that up. Kind of a different one this week, and I'm kind of curious. Besides Pluto, name at least one fictional dog, that'd be from published books, comics, cartoons, TV, movies, that shares its name with a solar system object, not something on Earth, a solar system object off Earth.

And I've got at least one answer. I suspect there are a lot more. Find me an answer and tell me what it's from, and you will be entered into the random selection and go to planetary.org slash radio contest to enter. How interesting. This may be another tough one, but the answer should be fascinating. You've got until the 15th. That would be Monday, July 15 at 2 p.m. Pacific time to get us this one and win yourself a brand new Planetary Radio t-shirt.

All right, everybody, go out there. Look up at the night sky and think about ducks. Quack. He's Duck Dodgers in the 23rd and a half. Never mind. No, he's really Bruce Betts, the director of projects for the Planetary Society at Random Space Fact. Did you know that? He's got a lot of followers at Random Space Fact on Twitter.

And he is also joining us every week right here for What's Up. A special show next week as I head off for a short vacation. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by a grant from the Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, and by the tanned members of the Planetary Society. Clear summer skies. Thank you.