Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Venus Express Leaves for Earth's Twin

Episode Date: October 17, 2005

Venus Express Project Scientist Håkan Svedhem talks about the first mission to the mysterious planet in more than a decade. Q&A on Jupiter's Great Red Spot and other storms. What's Up announces TWO new space contests.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Venus Express leaves for Earth's twin this week on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone, welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Swedish-born Håkan Svedheim is project scientist for the first mission to Venus in more than ten years. He'll tell us about the European Space Agency's powerful probe that will

peer right through the thick clouds to the mysterious surface. And by interesting coincidence, Bruce Betts will mark the 30th anniversary of another Venusian milestone in today's edition of What's Up. Of course, we'll also name the latest winner of a Planetary Radio t-shirt in our space trivia contest. And Bruce has news of yet another competition,

one with a grand prize you might like even better than the shirt off our backs. Let's get to this week's headlines. As we finished assembling the show, the two Chinese astronauts in the Shenzhou-6 capsule were preparing to return to Earth. They are scheduled for an early morning bump down in Mongolia on Monday the 17th. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin congratulated the Chinese on their achievement. More about this second Sino space mission during What's Up, including Bruce's attempt to pronounce their achievement. More about this second Sino space mission during What's Up, including Bruce's attempt to pronounce their names. A little cramped, and the in-flight

entertainment was confined to zero-g hijinks and looking out the window, but Gregory Olson says it was worth every penny of the 20 million dollar ticket. The third space tourist returned to Earth along with the International Space Station's Expedition 11 crew, their Soyuz capsule landing safely in Kazakhstan on October 13th. NASA engineers say they've nearly got the shuttle external tank insulation problem licked and have scheduled tests of their solutions for the next few weeks. Just as big a factor in getting shuttle discovery back in orbit may be helping workers displaced by Hurricane Katrina to return home.

Still up there circling our home planet is the Chandra Space Telescope, which has just found a surprise at the center of our galaxy. That's where a supermassive black hole is sucking in matter like the biggest bagless vacuum cleaner imaginable. Not a very friendly neighborhood for stars, you'd think, right? That's what astronomers used to think, too. Now, Chandra has used its X-ray vision to find a whole ring of stars surrounding that big black hole, right where they weren't expected.

Competing theories are trying to explain why. where they weren't expected. Competing theories are trying to explain why. Next up, Emily reports on the Great Red Spot's stormy but long-lived relationship with mighty Jupiter. I'll be back with Håkon Svedhem to talk about Venus Express in just a minute. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked,

What keeps Jupiter's great red spot confined to one location instead of moving around like Earth hurricanes? Earth has a relatively thin atmosphere above its lumpy surface. Earth's weather is very strongly influenced by what's on the ground, mountains, oceans, deserts, or snowy wastes. This surface variability gives Earth an unusually turbulent atmosphere. By contrast, Jupiter has no solid surface. It's all atmosphere. The most important factors influencing Jupiter's weather are the sunlight coming in from outside,

the heat being radiated from inside, and its very fast rotation once every 10 hours. Because these parameters don't vary much with time, weather patterns on Jupiter are incredibly stable. The Great Red Spot in Jupiter's southern hemisphere is a storm that has been observed for the last 340 years. It does change, though. Its color has shifted over time, and in the last hundred years, it has shrunk by about half. What other stable features are in Jupiter's atmosphere? Stay tuned to Planetary Radio to find out.

So much alike, and yet so very different. Venus is nearly the same size as our Earth. It's also our closest neighbor, except for the Moon. What happened to turn what may have been a pretty nice place into a swirling, acidic hell, hot enough at the surface to melt lead? ESA, the European Space Agency, will try to add a few more pieces to the Venusian puzzle when Venus Express begins

orbiting the planet next April. Project scientist Håkon Svedheim brings lots of experience to this new mission. The planetary surface and atmosphere expert has been a major contributor to previous projects, including the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan. We asked him to join us from Europe for an overview of the Venus Express mission. Okan, thank you very much for joining us on Planetary Radio at what must be an increasingly busy time. Yes, indeed. Thank you very much. It's really much to do now, but things are going very well. That's very nice activities we're doing, actually.

What is the status of Venus Express as we speak? Spacecraft has just been mounted on its launch vehicle adapter and been mounted on the upper stage, which is called the fregat stage. These things together are called the upper composite. The fairing will be closed, I believe, the day after tomorrow, and then it will be put on a small train, taking it out to the integration hall just outside the launch pad. So everything is looking good for your launch, which is expected to take place October 26th.

26th, that's correct, early in the morning, our time here. And where will you be? I will be just two kilometers away from the rocket and watch it with my eyes ascending to the sky. That will be very exciting, considering that you have been working on this mission for, what, more than three years? Yes, a bit more than three years. That is what it has taken. In fact, that is a very short time to develop a whole space project.

We have done it a little bit following a new concept, reusing many pieces we have had from previous projects, and therefore we have done it in such a short time. But indeed, it has been a very intense time. What we call in this country, faster, better, cheaper. Yes, in that direction, yeah. We think it has been a very cost-effective way, and it has indeed been fast and better, we hope, yes. But you've built a very versatile spacecraft.

Could you tell us a little bit about what you hope Venus Express will do when it reaches orbit around Venus in April of next year? The first spacecraft to do that in, I think, 10 years. Yes, it's more than 10 years ago there was a spacecraft around Venus, and it's very nice to be back again around this exciting planet. We have very many topics really to study there. Of course, some of the major topics like the atmospheric dynamics are very challenging. We have this very high rotation of the atmosphere around the planet, while the planet itself is very almost static. It's

rotating at a very, very slow rate. Another hot topic is, of course, the greenhouse effect that makes the planet being very hot. Was that a pun? A hot topic, I mean. Yeah. Sorry about that. I like that one. Let's talk about that atmospheric circulation, first of all. Are there models, has anyone proposed,

a reason why these incredibly fast hurricane force winds are moving so much faster than the planet underneath them? Yeah, people do try to model this, and people are coming a bit on the way, but nobody so far has really got a good explanation. They have not really reached those very high speeds that we do have. It's, of course, a question of calculating the momentum transfer that is done in the atmosphere where the air masses are moving and transferring the momentum and accelerating the speed at these high altitudes, but still it's not explained fully.

You're also going to be looking for geological activity on the surface. Yes, this is an interesting area because we know that the surface of the planet is fairly young. It has been more or less completely remodeled about 500 million years ago. This we have learned from the nice radar images we have seen from the Magellan spacecraft that made a full, the American mission that made a full map of the surface topography. And from that we can deduce that the surface has been really changed completely. And this is something we want to focus a little bit on now on this mission. As you said, the Magellan mission used radar to look through those clouds, but you actually

have a camera that you're hoping will be able to peek through the haze. Yeah, this is one of the new things that was discovered quite recently, and it is possible to see down to the surface. We know now that some near-infrared wavelengths, where actually we see the thermal radiation from the hot surface of the planet coming up through the clouds and thereby we can really see the surface. And this is the first time we will map that on a systematic scale. There were images made, very few, by the Galileo spacecraft and by the Cassini spacecraft when they flew by Venus on the way to Jupiter and to Saturn a number of years ago.

But these are really the only images from reasonably nearby, and they clearly demonstrate these capabilities. We want to exploit that and pull it out now with these new instruments we have. As I read more about the capabilities of Venus Express and what you hope to accomplish, it started to occur to me that some of what you hope to do, including the work with this camera, that some of what you hope to do, including the work with this camera, has some parallels to what's been happening much farther out in the solar system at Saturn and particularly Titan, another cloud-shrouded body in our solar system,

although one that's not quite as warm. Indeed. This is an interesting parallel. And I personally myself worked also with this mission for several years before I started with Venus Express. And it is amazing how many similarities you can find between these two completely different worlds. It's very ice-cold, icy-body Titan with low temperature and still a fairly dense atmosphere and a very, very hot, high-density atmosphere of Venus. It's an interesting comparison to do. What high-density atmosphere of Venus?

It's an interesting comparison to do. Well, they are both mysterious bodies, although soon, hopefully, well, Titan is already much less mysterious, although still puzzling than it used to be. Hopefully, Venus Express will help to answer some of the questions we scientists have had for so many years about this planet surrounded by clouds that, in so many many ways is so much like Earth and maybe once upon a time was much more like Earth. Maybe we could take a break now and come back and talk about not just the Venus Express spacecraft, but more of the mysteries of this planet, which used to be thought of as a sister to Earth. And so we will take that break and be back with the project scientist for the European Space Agency's Venus Express mission,

leaving in just a few days for Venus. He is Håkon Svedheim, and we'll return with him right after this. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system. That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. 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. We didn't just build it. We attempted to put that first solar sail in orbit, and we're going to try again. You can read about all our exciting projects and get the latest space exploration news in depth at the Society's exciting and informative website, planetary.org. You can also preview our full-color magazine, The Planetary Report.

It's just one of our many member benefits. Want to learn more? Call us at 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Our guest on Planetary Radio is

Håkon Svedhem. He is the ESA's project scientist for the Venus Express mission, which is about to make its express journey, lasting, oh, what is it, about five months, I think, to Venus, arriving there hopefully in April of 2006, going into orbit and beginning to examine that planet in ways that no spacecraft has ever done before,

and no spacecraft has had the opportunity in over ten years. I guess the last visitor was, as you said, the Magellan spacecraft. Yes, this is right, 10 years ago. You do have a lot of instruments on Venus Express, and you were talking about these interesting parallels with what has been happening at Titan, circling Saturn. Another experiment that I read about, that I believe has also taken place in the Saturnian system,

uses this technique of occultation. Could you talk about that? Yeah, this is what we're doing with our telecommunications system. We are sending an electrical signal towards the Earth, and while we are going in orbit, actually tightening is sort of coming. Sorry, in this case, Venus is coming in our way, in the way that the signal we are sending will be transmitted through the atmosphere, and therefore it will be modified. And by looking at the signal here on Earth, how it has been modified, we can deduce a number of parameters. For the type of radio occultation measurements we do,

particularly we look for the pressure and the temperature variations in the upper atmosphere, maybe down to depths as far down as 30 kilometers. Do you also have instruments that will tell all of us more about the composition of that atmosphere and perhaps what's happening on the surface of Venus? Yes, the composition of the atmosphere is, of course, a very interesting topic. We have a different type of occultation measurement that is done by doing actually star occultations, where we look at the starlight, how that is modified when it goes through the atmospheres. And that will give us a very good information of the upper part of the atmosphere,

what the composition is. We have different instruments that look down at the planet, spectrometers that really look at different wavelengths and see what the features of these wavelengths is. From that we can deduce the composition of the atmosphere. Actually in three dimensions because we are doing this study at wavelengths which penetrate different depths in the atmosphere.

We're trying to model the atmosphere in three dimensions. I'm glad you mentioned that. I saw that mention of three-dimensional analysis on the website and I wasn't sure what that. I saw that mention of three-dimensional analysis on the website, and I wasn't sure what that meant, but how fascinating that you can actually localize the level of the atmosphere that you're taking a look at. Talk about some of the other instruments that are on Venus Express,

and will they be helping us to determine this long-held theory that what's happened on Venus is indeed a runaway greenhouse effect. Yes, we're trying to find this out. One of the key points there is that we believe that in the earlier times, right after the formation of the planets, there was indeed a very large similarity between the Earth and Venus. And we knew, of course, that still Earth is a very pleasant place, but Venus it's not anymore. We knew that most likely there has been water on the planet.

And because of some little disturbance in the system, more and more water started to evaporate into the atmosphere, thereby heating up the surface even more. So more water escaped. And finally, the water even escaped away from the planet. And we are trying to measure these remnants of water and also the isotopes of hydrogen and by looking at that we can see how much water there is likely to have been in the past. So is it fair to say that Venus once was much more like Earth?

We believe so, yes. But of course we need to do the real measurements to really prove that that is the case but it's very likely that it should have been like that, because if it wouldn't, it would be very strange. How should Venus form in a way, similar place in the solar system, but in a very different way to Earth? This is not likely. Is there other instrumentation that you might want to talk about, share with the audience?

We have, of course, a camera that will give us a very good global view of the planet, and also it will focus on some specific things, like, for example, the unknown substance that we have found in the top layers of the clouds at about 60 kilometers. And this gives a structure that one can see in the ultraviolet wavelength region, but we don't know what it is. I was going to ask you about that. They are described as mysterious on the Venus Express website.

Of course, we'll provide the link to that website on our own site. Does anyone have any idea what these structures might be? There are some speculations, but it's really nothing that has been, nobody has been able to make any conclusions on this. There are even people that are speculating that it could be some biological region, because these areas where we find

these substances is an area where the atmospheric pressure is approximately one atmosphere, similar to the Earth's, and also the temperature is much more benign than lower down in the atmosphere. Biological activity. What do you think? Well, I don't think so myself.

This is not a mission to investigate the biological environment on Venus. But these are one of the wild speculations, I would say. But wouldn't that be interesting? What do you hope to find, either in the atmosphere or perhaps down on the surface? I mean, what would be an especially exciting result for you? I can see many exciting discoveries, because we have the potential with all this instrumentation and this spacecraft to do new discoveries. But I think particularly interesting would be to see if the surface is still,

if there's active volcanism on the surface surface because of the young surface. We think there should be one, but we haven't seen anything like that yet. I guess, while you wouldn't call it a recent bit of activity, there certainly is evidence that something was going on down there, what, half a billion years ago? Yes, this is true. It's not clear completely why this has happened,

but there was more or less complete change of the surfaces by massive volcanic eruptions and probably earthquakes, where really the inner material from the planet were seeping up, covering the surface in a way that all traces of all craters and so were completely wiped out. How long, if all goes well, will Venus Express be circling Venus, returning this unprecedented data? The nominal mission we have set is for two Venusian days, and that is about 500 Earth days. We have the capability on the spacecraft to extend that for another 500 days, and after that we will see.

Well, we'll wish you luck, and at least we know one thing. You won't have any trouble finding sunlight to power the spacecraft. No, it's a very good place for that. We have small solar panels, but very powerful. Well, Håkon, thank you so much. And we wish you, of course, the greatest of luck and success with this mission. Lifting off on October 26. Have a wonderful time there at Baikonur watching the launch of Venus Express.

Thank you very much. And I hope we can check back with you after you've arrived at Venus and start to have some data to take a look at. You're sure welcome to do that. Håkan Svedhem is the European Space Agency project scientist for Venus Express, which departs for that planet, that still very mysterious planet, even though we've had a number of spacecraft take a look at it. Hopefully we'll start to see some of those mysteries solved when Venus Express arrives at that mysterious sister planet to our own, when it arrives there in April of 2006. We'll be right back with more Planetary Radio and

Bruce Betts with this week's edition of What's Up after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla back with Q&A. The Great Red Spot is not the only persistent feature in Jupiter's atmosphere. Jupiter's globe is striped with alternating light and dark bands. Astronomers call the light stripes zones and the dark stripes belts. The light zones contain winds that travel from west to east at 100 meters per second, while the dark belts travel in the opposite direction at a similar speed. Where zones and belts meet, there is a huge amount of wind shear. Where zones and belts meet, there is a huge amount of wind shear.

Jupiter's storms, including the Great Red Spot, tend to sit on zone-belt boundaries, spinning in place as the zone whips past on one side and the belt whips past on the other. Like the Great Red Spot, Jupiter's zones and belts have remained remarkably constant, although their boundaries do wander north and south across the planet with time. Their colors shift, too, from white and pale oranges, yellows and greens in the zones, to various reds and browns in the belts. All of these features and changes are easily visible through a telescope, making Jupiter one of the most rewarding targets available to the backyard astronomer. 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 for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Here he is, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Fanfare, please. It's... He provides his own, of course. I should have known.

Bruce Fetz, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Did I say that twice? It bears repeating. It sure does. Have fanfare. We'll talk to you. Welcome, welcome. Venus Express, another exciting mission,

and there is an angle on that mission that we did not talk about during the interview. Let me talk about it. Please. We are... The Planetary Society is collaborating with the European Space Agency to run a contest about the Venus Express mission. It's an art contest where you can come and enter your entry

whether you're an adult or whether you're a youth. We have a couple different categories to give us your artwork depicting what a bird's eye view of the surface of Venus may look like. You can find all the details on planetary.org. They'll be appearing within the next few days if you don't see them when you first go there. And it'll be good stuff. The grand prize winner will win a trip to Germany to go to ESOC,

their facility that will be tracking the mission for Venus orbital insertion in April. That's so great. That's even better than a T-shirt. Well, than a regular T-shirt. I don't know about a planetary radio T-shirt. Good point. Yeah. But, hey, I bet we could give them one, though.

You win the art contest, we will give you, and you ask for it, we'll give you a planetary radio T-shirt if you wear it in mission operations. Oh, that would be cool. Yeah, exactly. I would love that. Okay, what else do we have? Speaking of Venus, it's visible in the night sky. Boy, is it.

Go out and see it. Oh, so bright. Low in the west shortly after sunset. But Mars, not as bright as Venus, never is, but brighter than any of the stars in the sky now. It is rising around 8 p.m. in the east. It is high up by later in the evening. Go out, look at it. It is orangish.

It is getting brighter through the end of October, the very end of October, coming up on its opposition in early November. And it's really cool looking. If you have a nice amateur telescope, you can go out and actually look for features. You can find websites that tell you what part of Mars you're looking at at what time of the evening on what day. And Saturn, let us not forget, Saturn up. Rising around 1 a.m. or so in the east. It will be high up in the east, about halfway up the sky before dawn. And still very bright. And still very bright. Not as bright as those other two

puppies, but still very bright and definitely, I'd say, the coolest in a telescope. Let's move on to one other side note, which is not something you see with the naked eye or of significance to it, but our own Emily Lachtwal has informed me that, indeed, it is icy satellite season for the Cassini mission at Saturn. They are in orbits that are taking them past the icy satellites, providing unbelievable images. Please check out planetary.org slash Saturn and see what they're finding. It's just gorgeous.

Take an icy satellite to lunch. Yeah, exactly. Okay, on to this week in space history. The 30th anniversary, Matt. 30th anniversary of Venera 9 landing on Venus. Survived about 53 minutes on the surface. Venera 9's on Venus survived about 53 minutes on the surface. Venera 9's claim to fame, it was the first spacecraft to return images from another planet. And it's a terrific mission.

Took pictures, yeah. They took pictures. They had other landers that had survived on the surface. This was the first to return images, and it did beat out Viking by a year or so on Mars for returning images from another planetary surface. Big week for Venus. Speaking of big weeks, big week for the Chinese space program. They've put up Shenzhou 6 with astronauts Fei Zhonglong and Ni Haisheng.

You did it. My apologies for whatever mispronunciation. Yes, the second set of Chinese astronauts to go into orbit, two of them flying around at the time of our recording, supposed to land shortly, testing out their system, had a successful launch. And they join up in space, William MacArthur and Valerie Tokarev,

that are on the International Space Station. Come back to that. Pondering with the trivia contest, stay tuned. But right now on to Random Space Fact! With the trivia contest, stay tuned. But right now, on to Random Space Fact! You know, the Stardust spacecraft flew through the coma of Comet Wilde. It was being pummeled by a million particles every second at the height of its attack.

Some of them, 12 particles, some larger than a bullet, actually penetrated through the top layer of their shield. Fortunately, they had lots of layers. This is that wonderful shield. The Whipple shield. Whipple shield, of course. Mr. Whipple. Don't squeeze the spacecraft. That's that one. All right. On to the trivia contest. We asked you before, what

astronaut or astronauts have flown in space the most number of times? How'd we do? Long-time listener to the radio show. He enters every week. He always has nice things to say. Then we like him. Dominic Turley. Dominic Turley's name finally came up again. He said, Jerry

L. Ross and Franklin Chang Diaz have both flown seven times. Dominic in Vancouver, British Columbia, you get yourself a Planetary Radio T-shirt, and thanks for playing. Fabu Fabuloso. Hey, for those of you who want to win a Planetary Radio T-shirt, answer the following question. What is the largest number of people who have been in space at one time?

So right now we've got four from three different countries that are up there on two different spacecraft. What's the largest number of people who have been in space at one time? Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to send us your entry. And if you can, tell us where you listen to Planetary Radio. And we do have people starting to tell us that they're listening on such and such a station or to the podcast or whatever.

We appreciate it. Get your entry to us by the 24th of October. That's Monday, the 24th of October at 2 p.m. Pacific time. All right. We done? I think we are. All right. Everybody go out there, look on the night sky,

and think about Velcro. Thank you, and good night. Ah, wait a minute. There's some Velcro here. Hang on. There you go. Nice response. Yep. Ah, wait a minute. There's some Velcro here. Hang on. There you go. Nice response. Yep.

Well, he's Bruce Betts. He's the director of projects for the Planetary Society. He sticks with us every week here for What's Up. Join us next week when author, poet, and playwright Ray Bradbury returns to Planetary Radio. It's a more personal conversation with Ray than we've enjoyed in the past, focused on his upcoming reception of the Thomas O'Pain Memorial Award for the Advancement of Human Exploration of Mars. Ray will join fellow honoree James Cameron at the November 12 banquet

celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Planetary Society. There's more information at the Society's website, planetary.org. And you can trust that we'll have our Planetary Radio microphones there as well. Planetary Radio is a production of the Planetary Society, which is solely responsible for its content. Have a great week, everyone.