Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Wes Huntress on the NASA Administrator's Resignation and a New Super Mars Rover

Episode Date: December 20, 2004

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NASA looks for a new boss as a new Super Mars rover takes shape on Planetary Radio. Hi everyone and welcome to Public Radio's travel show that takes you to the final frontier. I'm Matt Kaplan. Space headlines are coming up, but we'll be giving special attention to what may have been the two biggest space stories of the week. NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe announced his resignation.

He'll soon be taking over as the Chancellor of LSU in his home state of Louisiana. We'll hear from O'Keefe and former NASA Associate Administrator Wes Huntress. And Wes will be sticking around to talk about a milestone reached by the Mars Science Laboratory, the big nuclear-powered rover heading for the Red Planet in 2009. Here's that look at what else is going on in our universe.

Deep Impact will become more than a movie on July 4, 2005. That's when a probe by that name will smack into a comet at more than 20,000 miles per hour. The resulting explosion will tell us more than we've ever known about the interior of these so-called dirty snowballs. Deep Impact is on schedule for launch in mid-January. Cassini's first flyby of another moon of Saturn has resulted in more surprises. Little

Dione's surface appears to be covered by very complex braided fractures with steep cliff faces. The features may be made of newly exposed ice. Cassini is also ready for the Christmas release of the Huygens probe that will descend through the thick atmosphere of Titan in January. And science has named as the year's greatest scientific achievement the confirmation of past surface water by the Mars Exploration Rovers. Editors of the journal said there wasn't much doubt about the winner. Spirit, Opportunity, and the team behind them have made the first discovery of another place in the universe where life could once have existed.

You can point your browser to planetary.org for more news from around our solar system and beyond. I'll be back with Sean O'Keefe and Wes Huntress in a minute. Here's Emily with a Q&A about one planet's long day's journey into night. Hi, I'm Emily Lakdawalla with questions and answers. A listener asked, how can it be that Venus's day is longer than its year? There are actually two answers to this question depending on what you mean by the word day. Venus has one of the oddest celestial calendars in the solar system. Earth's calendar is easy to divide into days and years. One Earth day passes each time the planet rotates once on its axis, and one Earth year passes each time the planet progresses once in its revolving orbit around the Sun.

The Earth's rotation rate is so much faster than its orbital rate that days and years occur on completely different time scales. But Venus rotates very, very slowly. So slowly that the time it takes to spin once on its axis, a period called the sidereal day, is about 8% longer than the time it takes to orbit the Sun. However, if you define day like most Earth-bound humans do, you get a different answer. Stay tuned to Planetary Radio and I'll explain how.

It's widely believed that Sean O'Keefe's assignment at NASA was to clean up the town. Three years later, he has announced plans to head into the sunset. It hasn't been the longest tenure by a NASA administrator, but it has certainly been eventful. Claiming that he wants to spend more time with family, and spend that time in his home state of Louisiana, O'Keefe will leave the space agency as soon as President Bush can name his replacement. Speaking before the news media last week at NASA headquarters, he was asked if he'll regret not being around when the space shuttle returns to flight this spring after a long period of recovery and renewal following the loss

of Columbia. It's never been about me. And what role I play in this matters little relative to the extraordinary capabilities this agency has brought to bear on a really serious challenge. And while we all, I think, took the tragedy of Columbia as a personal situation and wanted to really reinforce a commitment to diligence that we're constantly working to reinforce, it is in this circumstance, I think this milestone coming up for return to flight, In this circumstance, I think this milestone coming up for return to flight is a great opportunity to be the opening chapter for whoever is the NASA administrator to begin that task and the first step of achieving the broader vision for space exploration the President has articulated. It's the first step in order to get there rather than being the closing chapter of my tenure. O'Keefe was asked about a broad range of accomplishments and challenges,

including his controversial decision to send a robot rather than humans in a shuttle to attempt critical maintenance of the Hubble Space Telescope. He stands by this judgment in spite of widely expressed concerns about a low probability of success, which could mean the end of Hubble's life. The concern that, based on the analysis of past trends, that there is a lower probability of success than other alternatives, well, that was about the same assessment that there was over the first repair mission in the early 1990s, after, with all due respect, many of your colleagues described this same instrument

as a billion-dollar piece of space trash. And the assessment from the community and the experts was that it had a very low probability success of repair. Well, I guess if we had listened to that wisdom, we would never have repaired it or never given it the first mission that it needed. So let's give this a shot. Let's see what happens. With us to look both backward and ahead is former NASA Associate Administrator for Space Science, Wes Huntress.

Wes is a past guest of Planetary Radio. The scientist serves as Director of the Geophysical Lab at the Carnegie Institute in Washington, D.C. He is also President of the Planetary Society's Board of Directors. Wes, when did you learn that Sean O'Keefe was going to be resigning as administrator of NASA? Well, you know, I have the habit of kind of scanning the web and looking at the sites that kind of provide space news, kind of the space dailies on the web. And that's when I first learned of the rumor last week, and then it was probably early this week or this weekend, you know, where

it became clear. I pretty much expected that he might resign. I had the impression when he came to NASA that this was a special assignment for Sean in order to try to straighten out the problems with the space station and get the agency back on the rails. He came from OMB, and so it seemed that that kind of assignment would make sense for him, and that eventually he would move on to some other part of the government. This is a transition time in the administration, and so it was the appropriate time for him, in fact, to make such a decision.

Not that he's at the cabinet level, but he certainly has lots of company with the changeover going into the second term of the Bush administration. Yes, and so this was sort of the appropriate time. One of the good things about Sean was he had a very good relationship, a very strong one with the Vice President, which is very important for a NASA administrator. Those NASA administrators

who've done the most for the agencies are those who have had a strong relationship with the Vice President, to whom the agency reports. That certainly characterized O'Keefe. What would you call the strong points, the achievements during these certainly characterized O'Keefe. What would you call the strong points, the achievements, during these years that O'Keefe was administrator?

And where might they have done better? I'll start with one, which was certainly a terrible surprise, a shock to all of us, and got in the way of dealing with Space Station, and that, of course, was the Columbia disaster. dealing with Space Station, and that, of course, was the Columbia disaster. Yes, I think Sean's administration will be remembered for two things, really. And one, of course, is the Columbia tragedy and the response of the agency to that. And second, for the new national space policy, which was issued under his tenure,

and which is, of course, directly related to that accident. I think what's interesting is that he will go down in history as one of those administrators who took something very tragic and turned it into something that is better for the future of space exploration. That's happened several times in the past. Now, this vision is still coming together. I mean, you're talking about the Earth, Moon, Mars, and beyond? Right. I was talking about the national space policy that President Bush announced last January. NASA has come to talk about it as Moon-Mars, and I think that's unfortunate because it's about a lot more than just the Moon and Mars. It's a very short and

excellent piece of stagecraft which talks about long-term goals for the future of space exploration. It really sets the stage for what the agency should be doing in the future, and then it's up to the agency and the administrator to then implement that. And, of course, the agency is right in the middle of tuning up to implement that, and O'Keefe's departure is a little disappointing in that regard because it will leave a gap before the next person can take over. And looking forward, do you have any idea where the administration might look for that person? Well, there's several places they could look traditionally. It seems like recently the administration in particular has been rather fond of looking on the military side.

Of course, Sean came with military experience, and Sean brought people into the agency whom he knew across the river, so to speak, such as General Steudle. That's one place they could continue to look, is to bring that kind of leadership into the agency. The other, of course, is the astronaut corps, experienced astronauts who've left the program, gone into industry, or gone into administrative situations, or even congressional ones, who have demonstrated strong leadership quality and a knowledge of where the agency should

go. go. And then thirdly, of course, is in industry and academia and other folks who have had a long history of participation in the agency program. So there's kind of three general arenas they could look. Do you think it will be a fairly quick choice and quick acceptance? We can hope for that because, in fact, that will be the best of all possible outcomes because the agency is in a strong transitional period here right now. It needs strong leadership and it can't wait for a vacancy at the top. Otherwise, things will just simply unravel. So I would hope that shortly after the holidays are over that the administration

settles upon somebody and gets him approved through the Senate process quickly. Wes Huntress is our guest. He spent about five years as the Associate Administrator for Space Science at NASA headquarters. And, Wes, we're going to take a break and then shift gears, like I don't know if we've ever shifted quite so far on this program, going from talking about the inner workings of NASA and the departure of Sean O'Keefe, the NASA administrator, to some space science. The fact that you are part of a project, an experiment, which has just been announced is going to be on the Mars Science Laboratory, which is going to be headed to Mars in about four or five years.

So when we get back from this break, we'll shift to the red planet. You are listening to Planetary Radio with our guest, Wes Huntress. This is Buzz Aldrin. When I walked on the moon, I knew it was just the beginning of humankind's great adventure in the solar system.

That's why I'm a member of the Planetary Society, the world's largest space interest group. The Planetary Society is helping to explore Mars. We're tracking near-Earth asteroids and comets. We sponsor the search for life on other worlds, and we're building the first-ever solar sail.

You can learn about these adventures and exciting new discoveries from space exploration in The Planetary Report. The Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. Planetary Report is the Society's full-color magazine. It's just one of many member benefits. You can learn more by calling 1-877-PLANETS. That's toll-free, 1-877-752-6387. And you can catch up on space exploration news and developments

at our exciting and informative website, PlanetarySociety.org. The Planetary Society, exploring new worlds. Wes Huntress is our guest this week on Planetary Radio. He has been with us before. We just had a brief conversation about the departure of, the pending departure of the NASA Administrator, Sean O'Keefe. But we're going to go on to some space science. As we said, the announcement was just made a few days ago by NASA that instruments have been selected for something called the MSL, the Mars Science Laboratory.

And, Wes, I guess congratulations are in order. Thank you very much. You know, I have to admit I'm incredibly excited about this whole mission and, in fact, the idea that i'm finally going to go to mars although you know virtual though it is the best that any of us can do for right now uh talk a little bit first of all about this uh this msl which uh it has occurred to me and they've described it as about five times the size of the current rover spirit and opportunity you know we started with a something the size of a bread box. Then we went to something that was often described as a golf cart or two golf carts.

This sounds like an SUV. Well, this is kind of like a Volkswagen Beetle. And it's the next generation. It's the third generation of rover on Mars. It's a bit larger. It will be nuclear powered, so we won't have to worry about dust getting on solar panels and power management. It will have plenty of power all the time. It's designed to rove even farther than the current Mars exploration rovers on the surface now,

and it's going to have a much more comprehensive suite of scientific instruments to examine the soil and poke around the surface of Mars and learn more about it. Well, according to the material that I've read, including at the Planetary Society site, planetary.org, where there is a nice article about this, eight instruments chosen. Mike Malin, not surprisingly, in here, but interesting, very interesting, in here twice for imaging systems, of course, his specialty. Interesting, very interesting in here twice for imaging systems, of course, his specialty. But talk about the instrument for which I guess you are a co-investigator, which is known by the acronym SAM.

Yes, SAM. And what SAM is is a suite of instruments designed for geochemical analysis of the atmosphere and the soils. It's what's technically known as a gas chromatograph mass spectrometer. We, in fact, flew a mass spectrometer to Mars with Viking, and this will be the first time we'll have taken one back. It's an instrument that will break down the soil and look at the gases in the atmosphere to determine of what they're composed. We'll learn about the composition of the atmosphere. We'll learn about the composition of the rock material, and we're going to be looking for volatile materials in the rocks and soil which can vaporize and which will tell us something about what the rocks are composed of

and what their evolutionary history is. And maybe even, if we're lucky, we might find some signs of vapors that come from biological processes. We're going to be paying a lot of attention to that. So we found the water we were looking for. Now we look for the life that might be living on that water. Well, that's the next step. But the MERs, they discovered where the water was, that the fact that it was there, and have given us clues about where to look for it the next time we go land. And so when we do with MSL, we're going to follow that water and look for signs of past life that might have been energized by it, or signs of current life if it still exists

there somewhere. I have to think with nearly 30 years having passed since Viking 1 and Viking 2, that mass spectrometer technology that can make it to the Red Planet is somewhat more advanced. Absolutely. We've come a long, long way. And so this instrument will be three orders of magnitude more sensitive than the one we flew last time. A thousand times as sensitive. And it'll have, in addition, a much wider suite of detectability. We'll be able to detect molecules that the Viking instrument couldn't even think about doing. We said, of course, that this is just one of eight instruments that was just announced

for this amazing rover that may fly in 2009. And we should add, I guess there is only one of these planned, right? It's not going to be a pair of rovers. So far, it's just one. I'm sure that JPL and even NASA would love to fly two. You know, there's insurance in having two. But I don't know at the present time whether or not it's going to be just the one or two. I've got to put you on the spot, because I know that you, having just read these announcements,

you're not that familiar with the other instruments that have been named to be included on Mars Science Lab, but have you thought about any of these? Are you familiar with any of them? Well, you know, I've been so excited about having been selected, you know, with Paul Mahaffey, who's the principal investigator on this instrument, that I've kind of neglected finding out, okay, now what are these other guys going to do, and how can we fit our science in with them and make something greater than the sum of the parts? But there's such things as X-ray diffraction spectrometers on board, which will get

elemental abundances. There's this very intriguing instrument, which will use a laser to vaporize rock at about 10 meters distance and be able to remotely examine what they're made out of. That way, make decisions as to which rocks to approach. It's going to be an exciting mission. There is no doubt about it. Yeah, I think we've got to get somebody on this show who's affiliated with that ChemCam instrument,

this whole science fiction angle of blasting stuff that's more than 30 feet away with a laser and then watching what comes up off of them. That's pretty exciting. But this is going to be quite an instrument. You talked about the, what's the word I want, the synergies that may be found between these instruments, which has certainly been the case with Spirit and Opportunity. Well, see, that's the next step.

Now that these instruments have been selected, remember on Spirit and Opportunity, a single integrated instrument package was selected. Now they've selected eight different instrument packages, and the first order of business is to get all those eight people in the same room and figure out how they're all going to work together. That's going to be exciting, because I'm sure we're going to come up with things that none of us individually would have thought of. How far along is this instrument that you'll be putting up there, the SAM?

And I'm not sure that we said that it stands for Sample Analysis at Mars. Right. The mass spectrometer has flown many times before. It's what we call a high heritage instrument. It's very similar to the instrument that was on the Galileo probe that entered the atmosphere of Jupiter. And the gas chromatograph will be built by the same people in France who built the gas chromatograph that's going to be flying into the atmosphere of Titan in January on the Huygens probe. So there's a lot of history there.

And so that's why I think one of the reasons why we were chosen was because they think they have high confidence in our success. Well, good luck with it. Once again, congratulations. Very exciting. And we will have something to look forward to in 2009 for sure. So will I. Thanks very much, Wes. I'm sure we'll be having you on the show again. Thank you very much.

Wes Huntress has been our guest and he will return and we will return with Bruce Betts and What's Up for this week, a new space trivia contest right after this return visit from Emily. I'm Emily Lakdawalla, back with Q&A. The length of time that Venus takes to rotate once on its axis with respect to the reference frame of the stars,

which is known as the sidereal day, is longer than its year by about 8%. For most bodies in the solar system, a sidereal day that is similar in length to the orbital period would mean that the same face of the planet would be facing toward the sun all the time. But Venus's very slow rotation is retrograde, meaning that it is backspinning as it revolves around the sun in its orbit. Each time Venus passes once around the Sun, its rotation has turned it once in the opposite direction.

Should there ever be a human observer who could survive Venus's searing heat for one year, she would actually see the Sun rise and set twice every year. That is, by any ordinary person's definition, Venus days are about half as long as its years. 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 here on Planetary Radio with Dr. Bruce Betts,

the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society. Bruce, welcome. Thank you. Thank you very much. Shall we discuss what's up there in the sky, Matt? Yeah, go right ahead. All right. Well, as I previewed before, five naked-eye planets exist. I saw them this morning because I had to come into the office early today, and there they were.

We make Matt come in every day at five. There they were. We make Matt come in every day at 5. The brightest looking object in the east, brightest looking object in the sky is Venus. And you'll see Venus doing a little dance with Mercury. It's thrown off Mars. It's a partner of a few weeks ago. Now it's going to boogie with Mercury for about the next month, going in a little circle around each other. And then look to the upper, and you will see Mars, much dimmer and a little bit reddish.

And then look to the upper right yet again. Beyond that, you'll see another very bright-looking star, second brightest, which is Jupiter, all looking roughly in a line, again, because all the planets are orbiting almost in the same plane, and the so-called plane of the ecliptic, which is the Earth's orbital plane. So all those are in the east. If you go over towards the west, you can pick up Saturn, hanging out with its buddies Castor and Pollux and Gemini. And for those of you who don't wake up in the pre-dawn sky, go out and see Saturn in

the evening. Very easy to see. Coming up an hour or two after sunset, look in the east, and there will be a line of what looks like three bright stars. Two of Mars stars, Castor and Pollux, the brightest looking one is indeed Saturn. Now, you probably should, even I will force myself to go out and see this at some point,

because the next easy time you'll be able to see all five naked-eye planets together in the sky is like 2016. Wow. And we saw them a few months ago in the evening sky. Now's the time, ladies and gentlemen, for the next month or so or less. And take along the soundtrack to a hair.

You know, when the moon is in the seventh house. This must be making astrologers just go nuts all over the globe, right? I wouldn't know. That's the first time in the history of this series that anyone has mentioned astrology, and I was the one who did it. I believe it's the first time I didn't know something, too. I'm sure that's true. I guess that's not actually true, the number of times you've stumped me. What else have you got for us?

Okay, let's go on to Random Space Fact! This I share from some discussions that I had recently with some people who have actually flown in space, some astronauts. And I thought it was interesting, things you don't think about, things they get to see. They get to see, I knew about them seeing lightning from above because there are beautiful videos from the space shuttle and space station, others seeing lightning in the atmosphere, but also they see meteors from above. They're not very faint, but they can look down and see meteors in the night sky looking from above. And they actually can fly through the aurora at times and see the aurora going through it.

How cool is that? Wow, that is cool. Boy, I hope that Richard Branson's making a note of this for his airline, his space line. That's amazing. I don't think the first phase is going to get much chance of doing that. Maybe down the road, many, many, many, many, many, many years from now when someone goes orbital, but in terms of suborbital, not

so much. We digress. Let's move on to the trivia contest. We asked you, on Phobos, the moon of Mars, there is a very large crater. Compared to the size of the moon, actually so large that if the impact had been a little bit larger, it would have shattered and broken the entire moon apart. What is that crater named and why?

We get lots of entries nowadays. And so, you know, we always tell you, well, we don't always, but we are always thinking that we'd love to give you all T-shirts, every one of you who enters. But it just doesn't work that way. Bonnie Preeby is not the winner this week. Sorry, Bonnie. I had your hopes up there for a millisecond, didn't I? At least he didn't call you a loser. I just really liked your entry.

It got stuck with the name Stickney because Asaph Hall, dude who discovered it, not to be confused with the NASA dude, decided to be romantic and named it after his honey poo. Well, Bonnie, excellent answer. Well phrased and correct, but you were not the one chosen this week. I'm sorry. Here's our winner, Bix Morgan, who also got it right. And yes, indeed, the wife of Asaph Hall. Her maiden name was Stickme,

and so I guess in the 70s they got around to naming that big crater after her. Yes, yes. Technically, Bonnie's a little off. Asaph didn't name it after her because he had no resolution, just barely could discover the moons, much less see this tiny moon that's 10 or 20 kilometers across shaped like a potato. But in the 70s, when they saw it, they then did the naming after his honey poo who had encouraged him. Aww.

Well, Bix Morgan, in Oregon, Wisconsin, you're going to be getting that Planetary Radio t-shirt, and somebody else is going to win based on the question that Bruce is about to tell us about now. Indeed. And today's show has discussed the NASA dude, the NASA administrator.

For reference to NASA dude, please see previous trivia contest. The NASA administrator, currently Sean O'Keefe, who's resigning. What I want you to tell us to win your fabulous Planetary Radio t-shirt is how many NASA administrators have there been, including Sean O'Keefe. Go to planetary.org slash radio. Find out how to enter our contest. Win big. Win often. Go out there. Have fun. And do it by Wednesday, excuse me, not Wednesday, Monday, December 28, Monday, December 28 at noon Pacific time

to become a part of this brand new Planetary Radio What's Up Space Trivia Contest. Bruce, we're out of time. I'm sorry. We'll be back next week. Oh, good. All right, look up in the night sky and think about why fruitcake could possibly have a reason to exist. Thank you, and good night. Fruitcake in orbit.

I wonder if NASA's tested that. Fruitcake in space! That's Bruce Betts, the Director of Projects for the Planetary Society, who joins us each week here on What's Up. And yes, you did hear yours truly make a boo-boo just now. The deadline for the new trivia contest is Monday, December 27, 2004, not the 28th. I hope you'll join us next week for an error-free edition of Planetary Radio.

Take care, everyone.