Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - What Will You Send to the Moon?

Episode Date: August 28, 2019

Astrobotic is one of several companies that are building small, robotic landers to take commercial payloads to the surface of the Moon. With a new contract from NASA to support his company’s work, CEO John Thornton looks forward to touching down in 2021. Senior editor Emily Lakdawalla can’t wait for the Europa Clipper to reach Europa, one of Jupiter’s ocean moons. Who doesn’t want more cow bell? Chief scientist Bruce Betts gets his share as he helps us explore the current night sky in What’s Up. Learn more about this week’s guests and topics at:  http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2019/0828-2019-john-thornton-astrobotic.htmlSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What will you send to the moon? 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. Astrobotic is one of several companies that are at the threshold of Earth's only natural satellite. the threshold of Earth's only natural satellite. CEO John Thornton will join me to talk about his plans and the big boost they just got from NASA. Everyone who has been anxiously waiting to hear a cowbell on our show about the cosmos is about to be rewarded. Stick around for What's Up with Bruce,

and you might also be rewarded with a Planetary Radio t-shirt. A lot of you have also been patiently waiting to hear senior editor Emily Lakdawalla's return. Wait no longer. Emily, it has been much too long. I welcome you back to Planetary Radio, and I hope we can get back to talking semi-regularly here. Well, there's certainly no lack of things to talk about. Yeah, well, and you talk about them as well with help from a lot of other people in the Planetary Report. And we'll be talking to you about the new issue of that coming out very soon. For now, well, it was just a few days ago on the 19th of August that we heard from JPL and NASA that the Europa Clipper mission got another go-ahead, that grand mission out to examine that moon of Jupiter.

We've talked about this in the past. I don't imagine your enthusiasm has dropped at all for this mission. Not at all. And I just can't wait to get back to the outer solar system. Since we lost Cassini, there just hasn't been anything out there. And it's a vast region of our solar system. There's fabulous planets and fabulous moons. And we should be exploring all of them. Have we, in the interim, learned anything else about Europa, which makes this even more these geysers coming out of its south pole. And there's certain similarities between Europa and Enceladus that make scientists

think that maybe the same kind of thing could be happening on Europa as well. The jury's still out on that. They haven't been able to prove it. So that's something that Europa Clipper will definitely be looking for is whether Europa currently has any kind of geyser activity. So they haven't found anything like those tiger stripes on Enceladus yet? Well, Europa does have a lot of these linear features, paired linear features that pretty much have to be some kind of place where the crust is spreading apart and material is coming up from below. So that means that there's actually a possibility that we could sort of sample or at least measure the kinds of stuff that's inside Europa because

it might actually be on the surface. The challenge is that Jupiter has just the nastiest radiation environment in the solar system, unless you count the sun. And so all of that radiation slamming into Europa's surface, altering the chemicals that are there. So you're only looking at the decay products of what came out of Europa's ocean, but it's still exciting. Scientists just can't wait to get back there. Europa's ocean, but it's still exciting. Scientists just can't wait to get back there. And fortunately, Bob Pappalardo of the Clipper mission told us that, of course, they've been following the Juno mission very carefully. And that mission's been doing pretty well in that horrible radiation environment, right? Juno has been doing very well. The thing is that radiation is one of those things where there's a lot of chance involved.

Scientists don't really like chance. You have to deal with the fact that if just one particle comes in on a bad trajectory on an early day, then it can really fry something important. So you do have to build your spacecraft for the absolute worst and then hope for the best. This is Schrodinger's planetary probe, I guess. You never really know with radiation. That's right. What about the prevalence of these ocean worlds in our solar system and maybe beyond? Well, we don't know how many of the worlds out there are ocean worlds, but it just seems like an awful lot of them turn out to be when we look at them. Europa is not the only ocean

world in orbit of Jupiter. Ganymede has an ocean. Even Callisto has an ocean. And if we're talking the broadest definition of ocean, Io has an ocean. Io is molten most of the way through. It's just a different kind of liquid. And so there's all kinds of exciting worlds out there. Europa is actually the smallest of Jupiter's four big moons. And the other three, I think, are just as interesting. And I can't wait to see what Europa Clipper sees of them. Boy, talk about life as we don't know it. That would have to apply to Io. But hopefully we'll get evidence of very different results on Europa.

Emily, always a pleasure. Let's talk again soon. Definitely. That's Emily Lakdawalla, the senior editor for the Planetary Society and the editor-in-chief of our quarterly magazine, The Planetary Report. As I prepare this week's show, Chang'e-4 and its U-2-2 lander are still exploring our moon's far side. India's Chandrayaan-2 has entered lunar orbit in preparation for a soft landing. And NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has been named the lead developer

of a human lander for the agency's Artemis program. And as all of these progress, a handful of companies around the world are building their own landers, working toward the day when the moon will be open for business. Astrobotic is one of these. It and two others, Intuitive Machines and Orbit Beyond, recently received substantial NASA contracts for development and flight of small robotic craft that will carry payloads to the moon. Astrobotic CEO John Thornton recently joined me for an online

conversation that includes his description of an effort that will allow anyone to send something to the lunar surface. John Thornton, welcome to Planetary Radio, and congratulations on the tremendous progress Astrobotica is making, especially this award of $79.5 million from NASA as part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program. That's quite an accomplishment. Yeah, thank you for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here and a real pleasure to be able to say that we won that contract from NASA.

We're thrilled to have 14 payloads from NASA going to the moon with us to join the other 14 non-NASA payloads. I think this is a signal to the world that lunar delivery is reaching its point where it's going to be accessible to the world. It's here. In fact, the best evidence that I saw of that was right at the top of your website, astrobotic.com. Big headline that said, now accepting payloads. That's a real milestone. It is.

Yeah, we are really excited. We started this 12 years ago with a dream originally to go and compete for the Google Lunar XPRIZE, and we turned that into a viable long-term business of taking payloads up to the surface of the moon and essentially being a one-stop shop for customers all over the world to access the moon in ways they've never been able to afford to. We've talked to some other folks who were candidates, people who were hoping to pick up that Google Lunar X Prize, and of course, nobody did. Do you have regrets about that? Or do you think that it played, even though nobody won the competition, that it played an important role in getting us to where we are today? No regrets in not winning that, but I think ultimately that it did play an important role in getting us to where we are today? No regrets in not winning that, but I think

ultimately that it did play an important role in the very beginning. I mean, one of our biggest challenges from the get-go was convincing people that we could fly to the moon commercially, because before that, only three nations have ever done it, and they've all been superpowers. So what makes anybody think a small startup from Pittsburgh could go and do that? What makes anybody think a small startup from Pittsburgh could go and do that? So in order to convince everybody, Google XPRIZE helped create a platform and put serious money up to say, hey, this is not just a flash in the pan. We're going to try to do something for real here. So it took a while, took a lot of doing, but the prize ended up being a helpful platform to launch into the ultimate business that we're in now.

You mentioned Pittsburgh. Are you speaking to me from your headquarters there? I am. Yeah, we are based right here in Pittsburgh and really happy to be here for the city. There's not a lot of space infrastructure in town, but we are here because of the robotics talent. So we import space, we home grow robotics, and space robotics is really our special sauce, our core of what makes Astrobotic competitive and will be competitive for decades to come. Not by coincidence, also the home of Carnegie Mellon University, where you used to be a senior research engineer. Did Astrobotic come out of your work there? Yes, we spun out of Carnegie Mellon University. So actually right when I was graduating was when

my co-founder, Red Whitaker, was launching an initiative to pursue the XPRIZE. So I had a choice of going off to big industry or taking my moonshot. Obviously, I took the moonshot and never really looked back, even in the tough times along the way. Tell me about what's going to happen if all goes well in less than two years. Basically, tell me about your Peregrine Lander. Yeah. Two years from now, we're going to be flying our Peregrine Lander to the surface of the moon. So the way that's going to work is we're going to start on a launch vehicle in Florida that will fly us up to space.

We're going to be separated from that launch vehicle and pushed towards the moon. And then at that point, that's when our lander takes over. So it's our job to make sure that we're lined up correctly with lunar orbit, so we can capture and enter lunar orbit. We then make sure that our landing site is lined up underneath our orbit. And right when it is, we fire the engine, slow the vehicle down and head for a soft landing on the surface. So we're aiming for a place called Lacus Mortis, which translates to Lake of Death. It sounds very dramatic. But we actually go there because it's a nice safe, flat landing site in the upper right-hand quadrant of the moon, about 45 degrees north, 25 degrees east. So upper right-hand quadrant, as we see it in the night sky. So once we land on the surface, our lander then becomes the local utility.

So we provide power and communications for customers that come with us. So essentially, for customers that fly with us, we are the end-to-end service. Their job starts on the surface of the moon. Our job starts getting them all the way out there and supporting their payloads. Kind of a common carrier. That's right. Would it have made you feel any better to go someplace with a more peaceful name? Oh, let's say the Sea of Tranquility. Yeah, we looked at that for quite some time. The other reason that we're interested in Lachis Mortis, the Lake of Death, is because there's a potentially an entrance to a cave that's in the vicinity of our landing. And the caves on the moon are, I think, underreported in the community. And I think one of the greatest discoveries other than

water on the moon, since we refocused on the moon in the last decade or so. But the caves could be incredibly important to the future of humanity on the moon because they provide natural protection from the elements, protection from radiation from the sun, protection from micrometeorites, because there's no atmosphere to burn them up, and also protection from the elements, protection from radiation from the sun, protection from micrometeorites because there's no atmosphere to burn them up, and also protection from the thermal extremes on the surface. So the caves could be where people settle for the first time on the moon, as opposed to surface assets, as we all see drawn in the pictures. Is this possibly one of these lava tubes that we have talked about previously on this show,

both on the moon and on Mars? It is possibly one of those, yeah. And the entrance that, unfortunately, would be a little bit too far from our landing site to drive to, but on a future flight, we could return. The interesting part about this particular entrance is it looks like it's collapsed. And we hope that it's collapsed in a way that

provides a natural ramp to drive down into one of the caves, because that's one of the caves because that's one of the biggest challenges to get in these caves they they're not just you know on the side of a cliff or something like that they show up as sinkholes so you have to descend tens or maybe even 100 meters down to the to the floor of the cave and then go from there into the uh into the cavern um so it's that's very very challenging and the scale of that is is quite difficult and daunting to get a robot inside of but if you found one with a ramp, hey, that might be the one. And what exciting potential. Okay, we're certainly feeling the pressure on that one.

But we are at a post-PDR phase, and we're just a few months away from our critical design review, and that's our last design review before we buy all the critical components for flight. We have also a couple of hardware developments in work, including the integrated avionics unit, essentially the computer to operate the whole spacecraft, as well as the structural test model. So those two are critical developments that will occur prior to that review to make sure that the critical systems are checked out for the lander and are indeed working the way we expect them to do. And then we're out building the lander after critical design review and heading to assembly and then test, test, test, test, test as much as we can here on Earth. I'm glad you brought up testing. How do you manage that? I mean, do you have access to a nice vacuum chamber?

Yeah, we're going to be working with NASA for some of that testing, and then others will be done by commercial organizations. But essentially, the big challenge with testing a moon rover, or sorry, moon lander, we're also building rovers, but the moon lander testing is challenging because you can't fly it here on earth. If you took our moon lander fully fueled, put it out in the parking lot out back and laid it up, it would make a lot of flame and smoke, but it wouldn't actually take off the ground. And that's because it's designed for lunar gravity, not earth gravity. Because of that, it makes it really difficult to test. So what we have to do is take out all the individual

components and test them individually to see if they're working and then start to piece some together that can work together. And then we put it through full hardware simulators where we are simulating the inputs that those sensors will have during the flight. I'll say it again. Space is hard, and landing on something is even harder. I mean, are you studying other efforts? Specifically, I have in mind the recent Beresheet landing attempt. Yes, we've been looking at that as well as every other landing that's occurred on the moon, including Apollo Surveyor, the Lunokhod vehicles, the ones the Soviets sent, as well as even

non-lunar landings like Mars. There are aspects of that that are very relevant. So we're looking at it all. The most interesting one with Beresheet, we know very well what's going on there. We saw reports on that and we feel confident that we've mitigated those risks. Since you brought up Surveyor, are you as impressed by those early, what, mid-60s landers as I and a lot of others are? I mean, it just seemed like such an accomplishment considering how relatively unsophisticated things were at the time. It is remarkable what they were able to accomplish. The computing power of the day was brand new, right on the edge. I mean, they had to build some of the first computers for Apollo. Common saying, it's less computing

power than a pocket calculator. And it's very, very true. So it really relied on ingenuity and pushing the bounds of structural and electrical design to make these things go. So hats off to all those people that worked on Apollo. It's remarkable what they did. And they were inventing these things for the very first time. Yeah. And a lot of these things that are now commonplace in space started during that era. That's John Thornton of Astrobotic.

And we are going to go back to my great conversation with him in a moment. But first, a word, another word, actually, about LinkedIn Talent Solutions, LinkedIn Jobs. It's the job board you should consider if you're looking to fill a key position in your organization. I am so impressed with it. I just spent some more time exploring it. I noticed that they have this great candidate tracking system so that you can keep track of what stage every candidate that you talk to is currently at, right up through offering them a job. You know that every eight seconds somebody makes a hire through LinkedIn? That's pretty impressive, but not surprising considering the great tools they have for matching great candidates with your great organization. With LinkedIn Jobs, you can pay what you want. And the first $50 is on them.

Just visit linkedin.com slash planetary. You can remember that. Again, that's linkedin.com slash planetary to get $50 off your first job post. Terms and conditions apply. There's another line on your website that I love. It says, you keep the rocket science to a minimum. What's wrong with rocket science? Yeah, I mean, we are out to build a commercial delivery service. So we are not out to create the next generation rocket or the next generation this, that, or the other thing.

We want to make flying to the moon as routine as possible. So one parallel could be the airline industry. We aren't the Amelia Earhart. We are the first airline in the world. We are making that regular flight to the surface of the moon, and we want to make it as easy as buying an airline ticket. So it's a very different kind of approach. We're not looking to break new ground from a technology standpoint. We are looking to deliver reliably again and again and again. And that's the priority. And it might need new tech to get there, but ultimately the end goal is reliable commercial delivery. And there are others attempting to do this, of course. We've talked

to a couple of them on this show. And everybody, I mean, the landers have some similarities if you look at them with, you know, an unsophisticated eye like mine, but there are surely big differences too. What sets Peregrine and Astrobotic apart? very get-go have been very customer focused from its very foundation. So the lander is built around carrying payloads to the moon. It's not an afterthought. It's not something that, you know, hey, maybe they could bolt onto the side of this or something. It is fundamentally built as a delivery truck. So the four, they almost look like wings, but the pallet edges that's encircled the lander, that's where the payloads go. And everything else is built around that. That's one of the big differentiators. And then the next is that we've been selling and working with the market for a very, very long time. We had the world's first lunar payload sale.

We also are now leading the world in payload sales. And, of course, now we've got the big NASA contract as an exclamation point to that market success. And I want to encourage listeners to take a look at your website, astrobotic.com. Of course, we'll put up a link on the show page at planetary.org slash radio as well, because it has lots of great shots of this lander and stuff that's yet to come, which I think we'll get to in a few minutes, and some video as well, but also a lot of really cool information for people who might want to send stuff to the moon. You already said you've got 28 payloads lined up for this very first landing. Can you talk about some of those? What are some examples?

Sure. So they're all listed on our manifest page for more information, but to just put some highlights on there, we've got 14 from NASA. So one of those payloads is a precursor payload to study the volatiles, the potential resources at the moon to see if we can understand more about what's in the regolith, the moon dirt, and see if some of those volatiles and resources could be compelling for people. One of the first ones that we're looking at, and a lot of the community is looking at, is water. So if you can find water, ice at the poles of the moon, you can turn that into rocket fuel. That could be like oil is here on Earth and power the next generation of space exploration. And the moon could become a refueling station. So there's a payload around that.

There's also one payload I like to point out is the Mexican Space Agency is sending a payload. They're a modest sized agency, relatively new, but they could be the fourth nation to operate on the moon after China because they're flying with us. And that's an amazing opportunity for us to be a part of and exciting for their country. And you could imagine that same story repeating all around the world. And ultimately it gets right back to our core goal as a company is to make the moon accessible to the world. There's only been three superpowers. We're out to change that. You've got at least one of the payload that I'm going to save a bit because it's an opportunity for everybody to get involved, to send a payload to the moon. But like I said,

I'll come back to it. You've also got several very impressive partners. I'm thinking of Caterpillar and ULA that I assume will be giving you your ride, get you on the way to the moon. Airbus, that also seems to indicate some notable success. Yeah, we value those partners greatly and we've toiled away for many years building those relationships and getting to the partnership stage. And I think that's another thing that sets us apart. We're out to serve the customer, but we're also out to build a team that can deliver successfully the first time. And we recognize we are a startup in Pittsburgh. We've never done this before. We need help from the best in the industry.

And that's where the partnerships with NASA, Airbus, ULA, and Dynetics, our propulsion provider, all come into play. We need the best in the industry working with us to make sure that we can be successful. Speaking of partners, let's go back to NASA. I mean, we already talked about what you're getting from the CLPS program, but there is also this program that you're a partner in called Catalyst. It doesn't involve money, does it? That's right. Yeah. Catalyst is a NASA program. It's a no funds exchange space act agreement is what technically it is, but essentially it gives us opportunity to use NASA engineers to help build our lander. So it's an opportunity for NASA to commercialize some of their developments and ultimately create the service that we're up to right now. So Catalyst was, I think, a fantastic example of a public

private partnership to build up the building blocks of industry. Because over time, the space agency should be building industry in its wake so that it can continue to focus forward on the most challenging things on the horizon for space exploration and development. So I think NASA has taken a really forward-leaning, really excellent approach to this that really is leading the world in development of the commercial infrastructure. They saw a catalyst in how it could support this and how it could eventually turn into support and create companies that can then respond to NASA service calls like the CLPS program with their big delivery contract with us. I want to go back to your website because it really is fun. And one of the fun elements is this great little interactive form. I stopped at the point where I would have clicked to actually send the form into you guys, but it lets you configure a payload. It's pretty simple to do.

Talk about this. Yeah. I mean, traveling to the moon and going into space is traditionally a very, very complicated thing with a ton of different factors and engineering from thermal design, electrical, mechanical, vibration, EMI, RFI, all these other factors. What we've really tried to do with the service model is boil it down to the very, very, very bare minimum of what are the key factors, what are the key interaction points that drive the costs and drive the interaction for the mission. And that's really what we put

together with that mission configurator. So while we're able to do things that are outside the bounds of that, we are really trying to make it as accessible as possible. And really, we're looking at new space agencies and commercial organizations and groups that have never accessed space before. And we think it's our job to make it much easier for them to do that. So as much as we can simplify that process, simmer it down to its bare essentials and offer it up, that's really the genesis of what led to that tool on the website. So this is a little bit like what's happening now with at least a couple of commercial companies that are making it easier for people to get payloads

up to the International Space Station. Sounds like you may be going, well, literally beyond that to the moon, but encouraging that same sort of access. Yeah, very similar. All right. Let's say that I want to send 10 kilograms to the moon, about 22 pounds, I think. How much would that cost me? So we charge $1.2 million per kilogram to go up to the moon.

So that would run you a cool 12 million. So it's a lot to you and I, but for space agencies and commercial organizations, that is an unbelievable price. Traditionally, missions like this for NASA even could run several hundred million dollars to get this done. And we're delivering 14 payloads of theirs for 79 and a half million. So on the net, it is a huge value to not only the taxpayer here in the US, but also to the rest of the world, making it possible and accessible and not just at a price point, but at a convenience point for everyone to get involved with the moon. I'm so tempted to jump ahead to this other

opportunity that you and one of your partners were offering, a much cheaper opportunity, but I'm still going to save it. Let's talk about the future of astrobotics. Certainly, you're not stopping with the development of Peregrine. There are lots of other plans visible on your website. Indeed. Yeah, Peregrine is just the beginning. So Peregrine is our small-scale delivery service. So it can take about 200 kilograms to the surface of the moon once it's fully fueled and loaded up by about mission two

or three. Then we're also building a larger scale vehicle called Griffin, which is about twice the size of Peregrine that can carry about 400 kilograms to the surface of the moon. So we can do progressively larger, more complex missions to the moon. A new service that we're rolling out is mobility as a service. So the idea is, you know, customer right now flies to the moon, stays attached to the lander. If they want to deploy, they can and drive off and use our wifi. But now we have the ability for customers to just say, Hey, can you just take me across the surface of the moon? And we'll do that for you now. We have our planetary mobility department up and running and we're now actively selling that as the next service. Is that this little rover called Polaris? Polaris is one of those. That's actually our larger rover. Maybe the website might be tough

on scale. We have small scale ones called cube rovers that would be about the size of a bread box or smaller. Polaris is about the size of a golf cart. So it's relatively much bigger. So Polaris is designed to go to the poles of the moon and can carry payloads across the surface there and even in and out of these permanently shadowed craters. So it could be some of the architecture required to extract resources from the poles. be some of the architecture required to extract resources from the poles. When you say cube, of course, my ears perk up because we know a little bit about cubes or CubeSats at the Planetary Society with our light sail. Is this along those lines or is it just coincidence that it's also a cube?

It is exactly along those lines. So CubeSats are a great success and have been so fantastic for the space community and has really made space accessible to the world because of that very, very low price point, common componentry, very simple architecture. We want to have that same thing with rover. So essentially take a CubeSat, put some wheels on it, that's a cube rover. Very cool. You did years ago, some early work on developing drills that could get below the surface of the moon, get at some of those volatiles like water that you were talking about. Do you have work going on still in that area? That's right. Yeah, we are still actively looking

at the resources at the poles of the moon. That's part of what the Polaris rover is designed for, and then the rover way back in time called Scarab that I worked on. The poles of the moon offer great abundance of water that can be turned into that rocket fuel. So we are keeping a very close eye on that, and it's something that we will have a very large hand in going forward because of the robotic nature of that. It just hits right up our sweet spot. And we're really excited for that opportunity. And ultimately, we want to be able to sell fuel in lunar orbit for folks that are going to the moon and even beyond. There were studies recently that showed if you could sell fuel from the moon, you could reduce the cost to get to Mars by 50% or more.

So it's quite dramatic what an offering could do there. How far off do you think is this day when we can make this kind of commercial, large-scale use of the moon's own resources to enable these dreams of Mars and maybe living on the moon since you can make rocket fuel, but you can also breathe this stuff once you separate out the hydrogen? It is in work. We know that NASA has interest in sending a mission up to the poles of the moon and extracting some of the first water from the moon. We know that there's a lot of research and development going on there. We've got some things going ourselves. I think it's going to take a little

bit of time though. I mean, it's kind of like going up and setting, if you're going out and setting up a mine site or any kind of factory that extracting things from the land, it takes time to find the right spot and it takes time to develop the right process and technique to make it commercially viable. We are in those early, early, early stages of figuring out what resources is there, what composition is it in, what process even can we use to isolate it and extract it. And then, of course, building a robotic infrastructure at the poles of the moon to extract it is non-trivial. But I'm hoping that we will see the first pilot plants in about 10 years' time, and then maybe commercial viability where we're actively selling fuel in the next decade's time, maybe 20 years out.

Doesn't seem that far off. You mentioned Mars, which is astrobotic, have its own plans for the red planet? We don't right now. It's certainly on our radar. We're keeping tabs on it. But what we think there is more than enough work to be done on the moon because that is ultimately the best way to get to Mars. work to be done on the moon because that is ultimately the best way to get to Mars. So we kind of think of our work on the moon as a building block to get to Mars ultimately,

using the fuel, using the technology, using capability that's developed there to learn to have humans on another planetary body like Mars. The moment has come. Tell us about this other payload, this other partner and payload that you have from the delivery service, DHL. It's called Moonbox? That's right. Yeah, we are thrilled about this program. So this is actually in response to folks emailing us out of the blue and saying, hey, I can't afford $1.2 million per kilogram, but I really want to send something up to the moon. In response to that, we built DHL Moonbox in

partnership with DHL, obviously. So what this does is it gives an opportunity for folks all over the world for a few hundred bucks to send something to the surface of the moon. Previously, you'd have to be an astronaut like Charlie Duke to leave a picture of your family on the surface of the moon, but now anybody can do that. So it's a really cool opportunity to have your story forever intertwined with the moon. And we have some really fun things that people are sending. We've got pictures of people's family. We've got micro inscriptions. One of my favorites is the SD cards that get sent by schools. So we have schools that will have every kid in their entire school contribute poetry or

drawings or literature or whatever it might be so that every kid in that school gets to connect with the moon in some way. We even have some pet hair from a family pet that passed. So really, it's just anything that could connect your personal story with the moon. And we are excited to do that. The moon is our nearest neighbor. It's what we all see in the night sky. And we should all have some kind of personal connection to it. I couldn't agree more. I only have one more question. You're the CEO now, of course, past president too. But at one time you were Astrobotics Chief Engineer. Do you miss that title? There are times that I do. I still, things. I started out as a mechanical engineer. So, you know, I renovate a house on the side and always do side projects. So I get to build things outside of work these days. But CEO takes me a little further away from that here at Astrobotic. But I'm going to be so excited to see the spacecraft come together. And I'll bet the engineers will be shooing me out of the high bay. excited to see the spacecraft come together and I'll bet the engineers will be shooing me out of the highway. Yeah, well, I'm sure you'll still be at the center of things when that time comes and

best of success to you and the team at Astrobotic as you proceed toward that launch that is now less than two years away. Well, thank you so much. We're really excited and we are thrilled to be leading the world back to the moon. That's John Thornton, the CEO of Astrobotic, which will be going to the moon if all goes well in 2021.

Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. The chief scientist of the Planetary Society is here. It's Bruce Betts. He's also the program manager for the LightSail project, which continues about a month now that they've been flying around

with those wings raising the orbit. I have to read this up front from Ryan Motis in South Bend, Indiana. He simply has a request to make. Bruce needs more cowbell. So, Ryan, this is for you. Awesome. Well, thank you, Ryan. And thank you, Matt.

You're very welcome. Hey, I knew it would come in handy someday. Just keep those sound effects around waiting for listeners to request them. Yeah, the live ones are best. The golden age. So that was an actual cowbell? Yeah. Listen. Hear that? I'll bump the microphone with it. The golden age. So that was an actual cowbell? Yeah. Listen.

Hear that? I'll bump the microphone with it. There it is. Wow. Please tell me you're wearing it around your neck. See, this is why you are the humor genius. The humor genius. Well, yes, I am.

Thank you very much. Thank you. So, yeah. Would you like to hear about the night sky, Matt? Yeah, why not? The cow constellation? No, but I will give you a centaur constellation in just a moment. We've got Jupiter still dominating the evening sky up there in the south-southwest in the early evening, looking like the brightest star-like object. Over to its right, you'll see Antares, the reddish star in Scorpius. To its left is Saturn, looking yellowish. And if you find Saturn and you find Jupiter, a little below Saturn to its right, to the left of Jupiter, is the constellation Sagittarius.

It is supposed to be a centaur archer, But frankly, most people will recognize most of it, the asterism of the teapot. It looks like a teapot. So if you've never looked for this, find Jupiter, find Saturn, look for the teapot. It's got a handle, it's got a pot, and it's got a lid and a spout, and it's just all quite delightful.

How many people know that song still? Do they still sing that? I'm a little teapot short. Never mind. Oh, please continue. We don't have time. All right. Did you have any more?

Because I have a question for you about this guy. Yes, please continue. There is a breathtaking image that has been captured of light sail. I'm sure you know the one I'm talking about. Yes, and in fact, I'm glad you brought this up because what constellation is light sail going through? Sagittarius. That is what I was going to say. It goes through multiple, but part of it is going through Sagittarius near Saturn.

Yeah, beautiful image of long exposure showing a faint line that is light sail moving across the image. And Jupiter-Saturn, the Milky Way, got another image from a few days before that. That one was taken in Arizona a few days before that from Turkey, but not as deep an exposure, so you don't see the Milky Way. But, yeah, it's cool. Apparently the spacecraft does exist. Well, kudos to those people who sent us those images. And you can find them in our social media accounts and probably, if not yet, very soon, I'm sure, in the blog at planetary.org.

You can also find them in the Bruce Murray Space Image Library on our website. All right, we move on to this week in space history. that Voyager, not Voyager, Viking, you know, the other V spacecraft, that Viking 2 landed on Mars at a quite northerly, fairly northerly location with a lot of rocks that would terrify people now if they were trying to land on Mars. They were just crazy lucky. I mean, just that they were able to put those spacecraft together, to say nothing of getting them to Mars and down safely and working for a long time.

Just amazing. All right, we move on to random space fact. The old astronomer returns. The old astronomer, old Matt Kaplan, you're a delightful young chap. Okay, that just went awry. So this is interesting. Maybe you knew this, Matt, but starting with Apollo 15, 15, 16, and 17, on the return trip from the moon,

one of them did an EVA to retrieve a film and data recording canister from the service module while another popped their head out and helped out. I do remember that. There are some interesting images of this, very nice ones. I guess they weren't tempted to do that with Apollo 13 just to see what exactly blew up. Yeah, but they got a nice look at it when they separated the service module. Yeah, it's pretty frightening.

Speaking of frightening, we move on to the trivia contest. What was, I asked you, speaking of frightening, what was Edwin Hubble's middle name? How do we do, Matt? I'm going to give you the answer from Mel Powell first. He's not the winner. Yes, you already get the joke. He says, this is the most brilliant question ever asked on Planetary Radio by Dr. Betts. Too bad his name wasn't Edwin Mel Hubble. Here's our actual winner. And I think he's a first time winner, Louis Boucher. Louis,

out of Grosse Pointe Woods, Michigan, who said, like you didn't know by now, his middle name is Powell. Congratulations, Lewis. Congratulations. We're going to send Lewis a Planetary Society kick asteroid, rubber asteroid, a 200-point itelescope.net astronomy account, and a Planetary Radio t-shirt.

Yes, they have returned for a limited time. Get yours while you can, or enter the contest anyway. I've got a bunch of other cute stuff here that I think you will enjoy. This one just straight from Mark Wendland in Illinois. Without Hubble's discoveries, we could have said we've explored a whopping hundred millionth of the universe via the Voyagers. Thanks to him, we can only say it's at best one trillionth now. Good thing we have the Planetary Society to help fight jerks like him. Yes, we are campaigning to join our petition to stop the expansion of the universe.

We had so many people who picked up on that bit of character assassination that I practiced when I called him a jerk. I wondered about that. Brian Jones in Virginia, you called him a jerk. A 1995 New York Times article called him, quote, vain, supercilious, obnoxious, pretentious, petty, egocentric, shallow, phony, insensitive, and a big wart. Wow. Well, all of that may be true, except supercilious, really? Why not? It sounds good.

He added, Dr. Betze, you're considering rescinding his Bruce Award. From Darren Ritchie in the state of Washington, interesting to note that per Wikipedia, no funeral was held for him and his wife never revealed his burial site. Maybe he just red shifted away. And then two limericks, apparently one fairly well known. We got it from both Norman Kassoon and Craig Balog.

It's from somebody named Alexander Rander rolf thanks to edwin thanks to edwin p hubbell our static cosmology was in serious trouble when we saw a wavelength of such tiny strength it proved the universe was an expanding bubble i actually like dave fairchild's better our poet laureate here goes The middle name of Hubble, he of telescopic fame, is just the same his daddy used. And Powell is the name. An asteroid was named for him, this man of high degree. Because of him, Andromeda is now a galaxy. That's impressive.

Thank you, everybody. Even all the people who sent in great stuff that we just didn't have time to read. We can move on. All right. We're going to acronym land. What does the acronym SAFER, S-A-F-E-R, stand for with regards to astronaut-related equipment on the International Space Station? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. Probably not related to the zero G toilet, huh?

Dang it. Now I need a new question. No, it's not. S-A-F-E-R. That's what the chief scientist says. You have until Wednesday, September 4th at 8 a.m. Pacific time to get us this answer. How about a 200 point itelescope.net account, that worldwide network of telescopes operated on a nonprofit basis out of the southern hemisphere of this planet, and a Planetary Radio t-shirt? And how about this? Instead of an asteroid, it's so much cooler. You can do a lot more with it.

How about a copy of Super Cool Space Facts, a fun fact-filled space book for kids by the chief scientist of the Planetary Society, Dr. Bruce Betts. I hear it's very good. I have it in my hand now. I only had the digital version before. It is very good. And it's much more fun having it in your hand than as a PDF. I'll just leave it at that. It's a good book. We done? We are. All right, everybody, go out there, look up the night sky, and think about something that makes you feel safer. S-A-F-E-R. Thank you, and good night.

He might even sign the book for you if you win. I don't know, if you're nice. That's Bruce Betts. Shall I say it again? Chief Scientist of the Planetary Society, who joins us every week here for What's Up. Planetary Radio is produced of 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 members, who are loony in a good way. Please consider joining them, and leave us a rating or review wherever you are hearing this episode. Mark Hilverda is our new Associate Producer, and so much more. Josh Doyle composed

our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan, Ad Astra.