Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - To Mars! With National Geographic

Episode Date: November 22, 2016

The National Geographic Channel’s “Mars” miniseries has begun. Mat Kaplan attended a kickoff for the ambitious docudrama last summer. You’ll hear from series technical advisor Bobby Braun, author of “The Martian” Andy Weir, Cosmos creator Ann Druyan and more.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Let's go to Mars with National Geographic, 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. Are you watching the mini-series? Last July, I was at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to meet some of the people who created it and some of the people who are included in the documentary portions of this impressive look forward at humans on the Red Planet. You'll hear Andy Weir, author of The Martian, Ann Druyan of Cosmos Studios, former NASA Chief Technology Officer Bobby Braun, and more.

Later, Bruce Betts will help me kick off another space trivia contest with a very special prize. Let's get underway with senior editor Emily Lakdawalla. Emily, congratulations on this fine piece of work that you've documented in a November 18th blog with a name that does cover it, but doesn't really reflect how much work you put into this. High-rise coverage of the Opportunity Field Site version 1.0. What did you accomplish here? Well, high-rise is the highest resolution camera in orbit at Mars. It can take these incredibly detailed images of the surface, including images that resolve actual rovers and landers on the surface.

And it's done a lot of imaging of the various landing sites, so much so that it's actually become kind of hard to figure out when I want to take a photo, when I want to look at where a rover has traveled, which image should I pick? So it really is about context. Absolutely. So if you want to know what it looked like in the area when Opportunity was exploring this or that crater, how it appeared from orbit compared to how the rover saw it on the surface. You need to go to this high-rise image coverage, and you've got to figure out which image is the best one for the job. Why did it take two years to complete this? Well, in part because I completed a draft two years ago, and it sat in the draft folder for

a long time. And then high-rise took more images, and it all got more complicated. So yeah, I didn't get around to it. But this month is a, November is a time when academics on Twitter often get together and say, I'm going to finish that paper that I haven't finished for a long time. And so in that spirit, I finished this post. You expect this will be useful to people studying Mars, academics, the scientists who are learning from Opportunity. Can you talk a little bit more about that? Well, absolutely. You know, right now, Opportunity is exploring the rim of a crater, and the rim, the crater, the geology changes as Opportunity drives along it. So the orbital context is very

important because what Opportunity is doing right now is going to specific sites based on what we saw in orbiter images. So if you want to tie everything together, put Opportunity's ground surveys in context with what we can see from orbiters, you have to be able to make these links between the right images and the times on the mission that Opportunity was exploring these different places. So what is still lacking? What do you hope that HiRISE will still do related to Opportunity down there on the surface? Well, HiRISE is kind of a funny imager. It's got this wide swath in grayscale, and then only a very tiny center portion of each image is taken in color. And there are a few gaps on the timeline

where HiRISE hasn't taken images in color. The biggest one, sadly, is right over the landing site. So we've never seen that lander in color from HiRISE. So I really hope they fill in that gap soon. We're so spoiled. We want to see those parachutes and things now whenever something comes down on Mars. That's right. Nice work again, Emily. Thanks and congrats again. Thank you, Matt. That's Emily Lakdawalla. She's

our senior editor, the planetary evangelist for the Planetary Society and contributing editor to Sky and Telescope magazine. You can also see her and Bruce and me and a bunch of other people in the new Space Love Story video that is at planetary.org, which is also where you'll find the blog posts we've been talking about and much more. Onward now to not Bill Nye. He's stepped aside this week so that we can talk to the Planetary Society's Director of Space Policy, Casey Dreyer. NASA Under Trump. That is the title of Casey Dreyer's blog post posted on the 18th of November that you can find at planetary.org. Of course, we're not going to be able to cover everything he has in this fairly comprehensive piece, but just a taste of it, Casey, welcome to The Regular Show.

It looks like at least one of the themes in this is that what we know is far outweighed by what we don't know. That's true, Matt, and that's not entirely unexpected. Space is never a major portion of most presidential campaigns. We actually know a little less, I think, though, than average, just because there's been a significant amount of uncertainty in the transition. And so we're still trying to figure out who exactly on the Trump campaign will be involved in the transition and then also in the administration. And we have to figure out what that means for NASA.

We've had some initial ideas. We've had some initial ideas. We've had some initial staffing. Mark Albrecht is going to lead the transition team. He's been involved in space for a long time. Very good, very competent, experienced person in the space industry. But beyond that, the Trump campaign will basically transition to the Trump administration and then figure out their policy on space. And at the time that you wrote this, at least, there had not been any direct contact between the Trump transition staff and NASA.

That's true. And that's, again, part of the larger transition issues that are going on in the Trump campaign now. I think they're just starting to contact the State Department, the Defense Department. NASA, as you might expect, is a little lower on that list of priorities. And so NASA is kind of prepared and waiting for the transition team. They call them the landing teams coming in from the new campaign,

but we haven't heard from them yet. You close your piece with some of the things we have definitely heard from the president-elect and his team, which are going to affect all of government. What's the outlook in the long run? So the big picture here, I think, is really important to look at. And this is why I wrote the piece, because there's a lot of good speculation and analysis already out there. And I linked to those in my article as well. But no one was really looking at the big picture here. And let's just look at the math. We have a Trump campaign promise to pass very large tax cuts on the order of five to six trillion dollars over the next 10 years.

We have a desire to pass a very large infrastructure bill on the order of another trillion dollars. And so you're looking at the U.S. Treasury losing a lot of revenue from tax cuts, spending a lot on infrastructure. And when that happens, usually we see cuts in other spending to try to make up for that. And the Trump campaign actually proposed significant cuts to the part of government that funds NASA. This is called discretionary spending, specifically non-defense discretionary spending, because the Defense Department, with a lot of political support, gets most of that money. So of the part that funds NASA, it also funds basically what we usually think of as government. It funds roads, it funds education, it funds medical research, it funds grants for students

going to college, the Commerce Department, the Justice Department, the FBI, everything is in this non-defense discretionary. And the current proposal by the campaign is to cut this by a percentage every year for the next so many years. You actually lower this to the lowest point in modern history, if that's the case. And if general spending goes down, NASA historically tracks with that. If that happens, despite the generally positive rhetoric we've seen from the Trump campaign on NASA issues and their endeavors in space. If you don't have the money, nothing happens. And that's not just me saying that. We've had reports from the National Academy of Sciences saying if unless

human spaceflight gets additional money, humans aren't going to the moon, they're not going to Mars, they're not going anywhere. We have major science missions that we want to go to Europa, look for life on Mars. Without funding, it's going to be a lot harder to do those and do the broader range of science that NASA currently does. So just looking at the numbers, just looking at the math, things could be very tough for NASA, regardless of the rhetoric. And that, to me, is one of the important things to keep in mind as we move forward in this new administration. Dark clouds on the horizon. I think it's a safe bet, Casey, that we will be going into much more detail on this topic when we next get together with Jason Callahan for the Space Policy Edition,

which will be on Friday, December 2nd. Everyone, tune your podcast listening devices to that show. We will talk about this a lot more and some other things too, yet to be announced, but it'll be really interesting. I guarantee it. All right. A little bit brighter topic now, Casey, we're going to talk to some of the people who were involved in the making of National Geographic's Mars series. I love that show. Yeah, you're in it. Oh, yes. Completely objectively. I love the show. That's coming up next.

And that was Casey Dreyer, the Director of Space Policy for the Planetary Society, who joins us here periodically and every month on the Space Policy Edition. No organization has a better reputation for bringing us the wonder of science and exploration than the National Geographic Society. So any new TV series about Mars from the Society was going to attract attention. But this production has an added element of excitement and involvement with famed director Ron Howard and his partner at Imagine Entertainment, Brian Grazer, at the helm, the six-part miniseries moves between the current day

and a big-budget imagining of the first humans to stand on another planet. Nat Geo began the countdown to the series' premiere with a splashy reception at the famed Beverly Hilton Hotel. I was one of the few media representatives who got to join the party, and I chose to talk with the makers and shapers of the series rather than the cast. You've already heard that our own Casey Dreyer appears. His smiling face was one of many experts displayed along a wall at the outdoor gathering. Another of those portraits was of Robert Bobby Braun, the former chief technology officer for NASA who has just become the dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science

at the University of Colorado Boulder. So I've had a lot of fun working on this mini-series I served as a technical consultant so my job was to work with the writers and the directors on making sure that the action that's that's portrayed is technically accurate i'm incredibly envious i know a lot of people who had that kind of job you know even for star trek and other movies and it just sounds like such fun were you on the set uh well it was great fun i didn't get to go on the set that they filmed actually on location far, far away from here. Yeah, very far away from here in a very secret location. But I did most of my work from home, actually, and on the phone. I worked with the early writers and the writers that were on the set, you know, with late breaking changes.

So I worked throughout the whole development of the series. I'm going to guess that because this is National Geographic and because there's a documentary element, were they really going for as accurate a reproduction of a Mars journey as possible? I'd have to give them a lot of credit. They really wanted this series to be technically accurate. Now, of course, we're portraying events in the future,

and no one really knows exactly how things are going to play out in the future. But they really took great effort. Not only was I involved and other technical consultants, but they had a whole other team of people that did an independent assessment of the technical elements. And so it was really, I would say, really well done. They had a mission review. It sounds like a spacecraft production process. It wasn't a formal review, but they did have an independent assessment team,

as some flight projects do have. Have you seen the end result? I've not seen the show itself. They're still actually, as we speak, they're still in editing. But I have seen seen the show itself. They're still actually, as we speak, they're still in editing. But I have seen all the final scripts for all the episodes. One of the great things to be involved with was to see the very early version of, let's say, Episode 1, and then to see how Episode 1 evolved over time and became more and more real as we flushed out the details.

Same thing with all six episodes. So with what you know, is it a plausible, I mean, there are many possible paths to Mars, is this a plausible path? I think the series is plausible. There's, I mean, you know, it is a docudrama, so let's be clear about that. It's not a documentary based on fact. And we are projecting in the future. And so there is some mix between character development and building up a story, if you will,

about why we might send humans to Mars, the challenges of doing so, and what happens to those humans on that trip, mixed in with how would we do it for real? It's got all those elements. Let's talk about how we're going to do it for real. One of the big challenges, as you know, is getting something really big, something big enough to carry humans down to the surface. It's something I love to talk to people like Rob Manning about. He's optimistic. How do you feel? Yeah, so Rob's a great guy, and he's been thinking about that problem quite a bit, as have I and a group of others really across the country. I would say that we're making really good progress in that area. I would, you know, about 10 years ago, I would have told you that we frankly had no clue how to land something the

size of a two-story house on Mars. It took all we had to land the Curiosity rover, which is the size of a small car. And going from that to a two-story house is a huge leap. It's like traveling across an ocean, if you will. The way we land heavy payloads on Mars in the future will look nothing like the way we've landed small robotic payloads, even Curiosity, today and in the past. But we are making progress on the technology. So, for example, larger aeroshells have been developed, new thermal protection system materials.

Supersonic retro propulsion is a technology that's really come of age in just, say, the last two or three years through government, academia, and industry, in particular SpaceX, working together. And it's been really fun to be a part of all that and to see the community push those technologies forward. So let's talk about Red Dragon, which is that supersonic retro approach, which Rob Manning said maybe they got it right. Do you think that Elon's going to be able to pull this off? Well, I think that architecture is the right architecture. I think the idea of transitioning from a large, blunt body that takes out 90% or 95% of the energy and then going straight to propulsion supersonically and decelerating from there down to the surface is the way we're going to land heavy payloads be they large robotic payloads

or humans that's the way we're going to do it and that is the approach that the SpaceX concept is envisioning now they're envisioning they're sending a dragon capsule yeah to the Mars surface so it's going to take a small payload it's not not going to, it's not a human sized mission, but that concept, that architecture scales to human size payloads quite clearly. There've been a lot of studies that have shown that. In fact, Rob and I worked on one with Hoppy Price at JPL just about a year ago that showed how that technology and how that architecture scaled from Red Dragon up to humans. And it works really well. Other than getting down there safely with something big where people might be able to

live out of for a few months, what are the biggest challenges you think that we still face in getting humans to the surface? Oh's quite a few. Landing is certainly one of them. I usually talk about landing first because that's, in all honesty, that's my area. But others would include in-space propulsion, getting there more efficiently, keeping the crew safe, frankly, on a couple-year journey. We've not even done that at the International Space Station yet. We want the crew to be physically capable when they get to Mars, not just to be spam in a can, so to speak. We actually want them to be able to explore. And another that I would

point out is in-situ resource utilization. It's not going to be as easy to go to Mars as it was for, say, Lewis and Clark to explore this country. They didn't have to carry all their own fuel. They didn't have to carry all their own oxygen, right? Well, we don't want our astronauts on Mars to do that either. We need to learn to live off the land. We need to be able to build on the water resources and the carbon dioxide resources, the soil and the regolith that is all around Mars for radiation protection. We need to utilize those resources to keep humans safe and to allow them to eventually settle Mars. And you'll see many of those features actually in this series.

Can we be optimistic about getting humans there in the mid to late 2030s? Oh, absolutely. I don't, to be honest, I don't think it's a technical issue anymore. You know, 10 years ago, I would have said perhaps it's a technical issue. Today, it's a matter of budgets. It's a matter of national will. It's a matter of how are we going to do it? Are we going to go as a country or as a world, you know, with international partners? Is industry going to lead the way or is government? You know, it's those geopolitical kind of forces that are shaping the path to humans to Mars and the timeline for it. It's not technology. Thank you, Bobby. And congratulations on the new job. Oh, thank you very much. It's great to see you. Former NASA CTO Bobby Braun, technical advisor

for NatGeo's Mars. Overseeing that production was the National Geographic Channel's president of original programming and production, Tim Pastor. Nice party. Thank you very much. I'm glad you attended. Well, and what's great for us, of course, is that you've got superstars of space exploration, space science here. It's really quite a gathering. exploration, space science here. It's really quite a gathering. It is. It's nice to see all the big thinkers and the pioneers of the age all in one locale. Which is not an entirely new thing for NatGeo. Why did NatGeo take on this project? Well, I guess in general, when you think about

Mars, right, we think about the DNA of National Geographic at its core is exploration, right? We are a channel and a brand linked to a legacy, 128 years of exploration. And what bigger exploration lies before us except Mars, becoming a multi-planetary species. And so as we think about our new programming and as we evolve this channel into the future, and we really become the premium destination for science, adventure, and exploration, tackling Mars was right at the top of that docket. So I'm old. When I think of Nat Geo, I still think, you know, Jacques Cousteau documentaries and so on. This is going considerably beyond that. There's a documentary element, but a lot of this is drama.

100%. I think at this moment we're also looking at what I like to call genre mashups. How do we take traditional, maybe perhaps well-trodden genres, mash them up with something fresh and new, perhaps from an alternative genre as well, to create something that has seemingly yet to be seen. And especially when we tackle these big topics, for instance, Mars, what we're doing here is really truly melding documentary programming with feature-quality scripted programming to, I would say, genre-bust, what the idea of a doc drama really is.

So there must be a big emphasis on authenticity. At National Geographic, everything, the ground rule is it needs to be authentic. And especially what we've recognized, even with our audience, is always just authentic storytelling. And especially when you're talking about a premium brand like National Geographic, at the end of the day, the core needs to be based on authentic programming. And you've brought in the right people to do that. I mean, we were talking to Bobby Braun just a few moments ago. Correct. Bobby, in general, was a huge support and a huge help and a huge assistance

and put a lot of time and energy into this program with just from script phase to production design to problem solving, everything from his personal experience, his background, really his fingerprints are on this program. And also, as you said, not only just from the experts in the academic side, but from world-class storytellers like Brian Grazier and Ron Howard. At the end of the day, I think we've really assembled a world-class team that spans both the creative as well as the technical and the engineering side. You got Andy Weir here, good friend of the Planetary Society in this radio show.

He and the folks who made the film version of The Martian have set a pretty high bar, not just for science but for entertainment. Nat Geo's going to measure up? I like to think that we are not trying to remake The Martian. I mean, what Andy has done is phenomenal. Our story is, again, the pursuit of man right now becoming multi-planetary species, and those who are on this planet at this moment pioneering the way forward to make that happen, as well as setting our story in a narrative structure on Mars. Thank you so much. Thank you. Appreciate it. Tim Pastor of the National Geographic Channel.

When we return to last July's NatGeo Mars reception, we'll join Andy Weir and Ann Druyan. This is Planetary Radio. Hello, I'm Robert Picardo, Planetary Radio. You can sign up at planetary.org forward slash connect. When you do, you'll be among the first to see each new show. I hope you'll join us. Hi, I'm Kate. And I'm Whitney. We've been building a youth education program here at the Planetary Society. We want to get space science in all classrooms to engage young people around the world in science learning. But Kate, are you a science teacher?

No. Are you? Nope. We're going to need help. We want to involve teachers and education experts from the beginning to make sure that what we produce is useful in your classroom. As a first step, we're building the STEAM Team. That's science, technology, engineering, arts, and mathematics.

So teachers, to learn more about how you can help guide this effort, check out planetary.org slash STEAM team. That's planetary.org slash STEAM team. And help us spread the word. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan with more from last July's kickoff reception for the National Geographic Channel's six-part docudrama simply called Mars.

Geographic Channel's six-part docudrama simply called Mars. And who would be more appropriate to be heard from in a series about the Red Planet than the man who stranded Mark Watney there? Andy Weir is the author of The Martian. You just can't stay away from the show, can you? I just can't stay away from you, Matt. Thank you, it's an honor. Andy Weir, did you have something to do with the miniseries, or are you just a future fan of this show that's going to try and reach the bar that you set?

They interviewed me for the miniseries, and I'm told that segments of that interview will be in it. That must be why your picture's on the wall over here. Yes, my picture's on the wall of fame with a bunch of really interesting real scientists. So I actually did ask a NatGeo executive, you got a high bar that's been set here by The Martian, book and film, and he thinks they're going to do okay. But that's a great position for you to be in. Yeah, it's great. Yeah, no, I love that I have in some way increased the public interest in Mars.

And the more that entertainment about Mars comes out, the higher the public interest will be, the more funding the space program will get. And it's a great virtuous cycle. The renewed interest in not just Mars, but exploration writ large across the solar system, maybe even beyond. I mean, my God, there's work now on realistic work, if you can call it that, on interstellar

travel, at least for lentil-sized spacecraft. Sure, the Planetary Society is working on their laser-propelled craft. No, seriously, that's not a joke. It's interesting. Yeah. Phil Lubin, one of the guys involved now with the Starshot breakthrough initiative. There's so much going on. It does seem to be a bit of at least a mini-renaissance.

I think it all comes from the ever-reducing costs of putting mass into low-Earth orbit. So now for tens of thousands of dollars, you can put a microsat up into orbit because you're riding up into space along with hundreds of others. And so universities with like small budgets can put little test satellites into orbit. They're only about, you know, 10 centimeters cube, but there's a lot you can do with that sort of thing, especially when you consider the computational power of an iPhone or some other mobile device. I mean, we have a lot of expertise, we, humanity, has a lot of expertise at micronizing computer functions.

And you see that cost to low Earth orbit continuing to reduce. I mean, we talked about this last spring at the CONTACT conference. Still pretty confident that we're going to see stuff on the model. What was it, a Boeing 757 you modeled this on? see stuff on the model? What was it? A Boeing 757 you modeled this on? I know it was a 777, I think. Yeah, given the appropriate technology, the price of the Earth orbit could drop to something like $7,000 for a human passenger. If that happens, then we will definitely have a space boom. It'll be just like the commercial airline boom of the 30s. I hesitate to ask an author this because, I don't know, I don't want to jinx anything. How's the new book coming? It's coming along. I'm about maybe a little more than a third of the way through.

I'm cranking. I feel good about the main character and the setting and stuff, and it feels like it's coming along very nicely. Remind some of us and others who didn't hear that other show, this is on the moon. Yes, it takes place in a city on the moon, probably 2080s time frame. And it's all scientifically accurate, like I like to do. The main character is a woman who's a kind of small time criminal who gets in over her head. Wow, I'm intrigued. Well, I hope so.

Let's hope the book's good. I'll let you get back to the party. I know they've got you chained to the table out there signing books. Yeah, pretty much. They're cracking the whip on me. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. Author Andy Weir, also heard in the documentary portion of National Geographic Mars, is the head of Cosmos Studios and the creator, producer, writer of Cosmos, A Spacetime Odyssey, Ann Druyan.

As you'll hear, the music was blasting as I spoke with her, but her eloquence shines through. One of my favorite people, whether it's for radio or otherwise, sitting with me in Trader Vic's here at the Beverly Hilton next to the pool. Annie, welcome back. It's so great to be back with you. How are you? I'm terrific, and it is wonderful to meet you here. I didn't know we'd be able to cross paths. What is your involvement with this new mini-series from National Geographic?

Well, as you know, Mars is a blend of drama and documentary. And so I was interviewed for the documentary portion to be, I suspect, a voice from the past. And, uh... You were a voice from the past. You were a voice for the future. No, I'm a voice from the past because, of course, this is a story of the actual settlement of the planet. So as much as I'd like to be there when it happens, I'm a voice from the past, and I suspect I'm one of those voices that's saying, I don't know if we can be trusted with another planet yet. I feel like we have to demonstrate that we can get our act in order

before we're given some pristine and magnificent world to do with as we wish. At least there are no Martians to oppress there. Well, it looks like there aren't any Martians, you're right. But still, I think we need to study Mars further before we can say that definitively. Do you have concerns, as I think your husband did, about planetary protection? Because for all we know, there are Martians.

Yes, exactly. about planetary protection, because for all we know, there are Martians. Yes, exactly. Well, Carl really was so rigorous about developing protocols in the early days of the space program. And in fact, I'm pretty sure that he was the one who was single-handedly responsible

for the onerous quarantine that all the Apollo astronauts had to go through upon their return. I think they hated him for that because he was really, he was absolutely concerned and wisely, I think, because this was of course, you know, completely uncharted territory for our species. I'm not surprised to hear this, although I did not know that he had a role in that you know protecting our planet in that situation. Turned out of course there was nothing to worry about. There was nothing to worry about but better safe than sorry. My recollection is that he briefed the Apollo astronauts before they went to the moon so he was very much involved in Apollo as he was in

virtually every space project that NASA had for the first 40 years of the space age. How do you feel, and if you choose to speculate, how do you think he would feel about what a lot of us see as a renewed enthusiasm for planetary exploration and then by extension for science? I mean, the fact that we have people here today in this miniseries I think is good evidence. You know, our daughter reminded me the other day that, of course, Carl recorded a message for Mars under the auspices of his beloved Planetary Society. And the last thing he said was, I wish I was with you. And the last thing he said was, I wish I was with you. And I know that with his passion for exploration and for knowledge,

that he would have been thrilled that we seem to be reawakening to exploration and also to science. I think one of the great things about that movie, The Martian, was how respectful it was of science. And the idea that if you're in a really tough spot, you use your brain to think your way out of it instead of resorting to any kind of supernatural appeals. I thought it was wonderful. As Andy Weir wrote, we're going to science the blank out of this. That's exactly the line you know I was

thinking about. The new Cosmos series was evidence of this, but I think maybe also helped drive it. Do you agree? Oh, that's one of my fondest wishes and hopes. I would love to believe that's true. I would love to believe that as with

the original Cosmos series, the most recent Cosmos series was an inspiration to countless scientists of the future who maybe will one day actually go to Mars. And up there on Mars, there's a station. I wonder if you remember where you were when you learned about the Carl Sagan Memorial Station on Mars? You know you'll have to forgive me but I don't remember where I was. That's okay but how did you feel? Well every time anyone has made any gesture of remembrance of Carl, whether

it's because they tell me that they became a scientist or a science teacher or a technician or a mathematician or an engineer because of something Carl did anytime that happens I get a high out of that that is incredibly sustaining and inspiring. And Carl did so much, probably more than any single individual in the history of our civilization, to excite people about the power of science. So each and every gesture of remembrance,

I'm especially proud of the new Carl Sagan Institute at Cornell University and the potential of what the scientists and researchers who are working there, what they will tell us about the new worlds of the Milky Way. Anytime I see that letterhead with Carl's name on it, I get a kind of thrill and you know I always have that same feeling. Oh, he lives, you know, that's I wish, I wish he could know how many people he's inspired, not just with scientific curiosity and the desire to achieve something and to add something to our knowledge, but also with concern for the planet. And that passage, the pale blue dot,

that final thought about dealing more kindly with each other, it goes through my head endlessly. And I think of what a complete human being he was. That was lovely. The last time we spoke, it was about the Breakthrough Initiative, which had just been announced. Any news there or anything else that we should know about? Well, I'm very excited to be working with Yuri Milner and Pete Worden,

Stephen Hawking, and a truly stellar array of scientists on the breakthrough initiatives, including Starshot, which is so fantastically ambitious. This is a program to send laser-driven solar-sailing nanocraft to the nearest star within what I hope will be my lifetime. Of course they'll only be traveling at a fraction of the speed of light so they won't actually get to Alpha Centauri or Proxima Centauri in what is likely to be my lifetime but still the notion that you could take a thousand of these nano craft that weigh a gram that

are so tiny smaller than a lentil smaller than a pea but it's so counterintuitive and yet so brilliant that you know maybe someday we'll develop an Alcubierre drive and be more ambitious and be able to send whole legions of us to to other worlds but in the meantime the notion that we can send these tiny craft each of which has as many capabilities as the Voyager spacecraft. I mean, just, or Cassini. Just think of that.

These new frontiers in miniaturization, in material science. To find ways to get to the nearest star and perhaps the worlds of that star is so inspiring. What I keep thinking about is what a genius life is. What an escape artist, what a kind of a talent for wriggling out of what was probably some tiny poor vesicle in a tiny rock at the bottom of the sea just a couple of billion years ago.

And now, making leaps and bounds to the worlds of our solar system and plotting to find a way to get to the nearest star. It's a testament to the power of life and to the beauty of it in the cosmos. I don't want to show hubris, but I think we've done pretty well for ourselves. Hey, on my good days, I agree with you. On some of these days, I wake up and I wonder, but no. No, listen, this is an occasion for human self-esteem that we have made our first reconnaissance of what we used to call the outer solar system, but now we're beginning to see as maybe something like the middle solar system as we begin to really understand what lies beyond.

And yeah, I believe in us. And may we live long and prosper. Live long and prosper indeed. Last thought, I'm trying to imagine how we'd cram a golden record onto a lentil. Hey, but you see, that's the whole point. If you can take a spacecraft the size of Voyager and turn it into something the size of a lentil, you can take all the music that was ever made and ever recorded and send it in that same little lentil.

But then we wouldn't have someone like you getting to help us put our best foot forward by only sending them the best stuff. That would be okay with me because it would mean that every voice, every voice was preserved and that no matter what our short-term thinking costs us, that still that beauty of life somehow survives. It is always a thrill to talk to you. Thank you, Anne. I just love talking to you. It's so great to see you again. Thank you so much. Anne Druyan at last July's kickoff reception for Mars, the docudrama miniseries from the National Geographic Society, now airing on the NatGeo channel. Stay tuned to this channel so you can catch what's up next. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio.

Bruce Betts is the Director of Science and Technology for the Planetary Society, and he is going to tell us what's up in the night sky. going to tell us what's up in the night sky. And, and, and, and we have an exciting, a thrilling prize to give away this week only in the Space Trivia Contest. Are you thrilled? Can you tell? Yes. Let's go into it.

Evening sky, Venus, low in the west, actually getting kind of high and more southwest is Venus looking super bright anytime after sunset in the early evening and its counterpart in the morning sky in the pre-dawn super bright Jupiter over in the east before dawn on U.S. Thanksgiving Thursday the 24th or the day after the 25th in the pre-dawn you can check out Jupiter near the crescent moon for a lovely view. We move on to this week in space history. It was 2011, five years ago, that Mars Science Laboratory with the rover Curiosity launched. Yeah, and it wasn't long after that we were celebrating those seven minutes of terror that ended in that great celebration when Curiosity landed on Mars.

And it's still going strong, doing great stuff. You bet. On to Random Space Effect. Encore, encore. Random Space Effect. No, no, I was kidding. I was kidding. Sorry. So Valles Marineris, the large giant canyon system on Mars, is not only long enough that it would stretch across the United States, it's also up to seven kilometers deep.

Seven kilometers deep, about four miles, about four times deeper than the deepest part of the Grand Canyon. It's big. It's really big. That's where I'm going to build my resort, down in the bottom of the canyon. Really? What are you going to call it? What's that one at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. It's big. It's really big. That's where I'm going to build my resort, down in the bottom of the canyon. Really? What are you going to call it? What's that one at the bottom of the Grand Canyon? Ghost Ranch? I forget. Anyway. All right. I don't know. I thought maybe you thought this through in more detail. No, not at all. All right. We move on to the trivia contest. And we asked you, what supernova did famous astronomer Tycho Brahe observe? How'd we do?

Lots of entries for this one. Lots of people going after the Planetary Radio t-shirt, the Planetary Society rubber asteroid, and a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account. This was a very significant discovery in the history of astronomy, wasn't it? It was indeed. significant discovery in the history of astronomy, wasn't it? It was indeed. The noticing of supernova SN 1572 or supernova in the year 1572 helped to show that objects beyond the moon were not unchangeable as thought in Aristotelian thought. Our winner is Leonard Sojka, I believe a first

time winner out of Troy, Virginia, who indeed said SN 1572. So, Troy, you're going to get that fabulous prize package. We've got some other interesting ones, as we do every week, of course. Stephen Coulter was one of the people who told us that it was believed, well, I guess it did reach magnitude minus four, and that this is comparable to Venus at that brightness? What indeed, that's the brightness of Venus, the brightest not moon, not sun in the sky. Great video, which I bet you've seen. We were sent the link by Davy Van Ness,

a listener in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and you can actually see over a period of 15 years, the supernova remnant growing. It's stunning to watch. And of course, it looks very slow, but I imagine it's covering, in that amount of time, a tremendous amount of space. Yeah, those remnants are moving out at a serious speed. Got an equally interesting entry from Walt Trebergs in White Bear Township, Minnesota. He's an amateur astronomer, a very successful one, part of the Astronomical League, actually. He sent us his image taken from the ground by his telescope of a little bit of that remnant. And he sort of does a little blinking thing to compare it to what was found by Chandra

and the Y is spacecraft in infrared, Chandra in X-ray. It's really pretty good. We'll put the image up on the show page at planetary.org slash radio. And finally, this from John Crane, who got the answer right, but it's because of his compliment to you that I read this. Hi, Matt, love the show. I listen every Tuesday evening when it's available here in England. Please tell Bruce that he is mad as a bag of badgers. Thank you.

Yeah, I think it's an obscure Black Adder reference. Black Adder, the perhaps funniest television show ever made. Thanks again for a great show and a fantastic space advocacy effort across the planet. Well, thank you, John, for listening and for that compliment for Bruce. All right, we're ready. You can give us the next question, then I will reveal a terrific prize. What type of geologic features surround the residual north polar cap of Mars? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest to win the following glorious prize. First, I'm going to tell you that you've got until the 29th. That's Tuesday, November 29th at 8 a.m. Pacific

time. Now, the fabulous prize. We got a call from Astronomy Magazine and Kalmbach Publishing, the publishers of Astronomy Magazine and Discover, for that matter. They have created, and it is gorgeous, a globe of Pluto, a 12-inch globe. They're selling it for $99.95. We're going to give it to the person who gets the answer right to that question, that new one that Bruce has just given us and is chosen by Random.org. This is entirely made of images taken by the LORRI camera or instrument on New Horizons.

And it's all meticulously labeled. It is really a piece of art and science. You got that? And, well, you know, we'll throw in an asteroid. Oh, and an itelescope.net account, of course. Jeez. I know, it's too much. I forgot.

Can I enter? No, but I would love to get one of these for the office. I'm done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up in the night sky, and think about crazy badgers in space. Even does a badger impression. That's Bruce Betts, the Director of Science, Technology, and Animal Impressions for 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 proud members. Daniel Gunn is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.