Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Why Mars? We’ve Got the Answers

Episode Date: May 16, 2018

The great adventure awaits! Mat Kaplan hosts an entertaining panel discussion at the 2018 Humans to Mars Summit in Washington DC.  Eight guests provide their diverse and inspiring reasons for humans to visit the Red Planet.  Bruce Betts later joins Mat to explore the Demon Star.  Learn more about this week’s topic and see images here: http://www.planetary.org/multimedia/planetary-radio/show/2018/0516-h2m-why-mars-panel.htmlGuests include: Filmmaker Nicholas Agnew, creator of Seat 25Consultant Jeff Bingham, former NASA Associate Administrator for Legislative AffairsJim Garvin, Chief Scientist, Goddard Space Flight CenterJanet Ivey, Emmy award-winning creator of Janet’s Planet“Astronaut Abby” Abigail HarrisonKeri Kukral, Raw Science and the Raw Science Film FestivalSaralyn Mark, MD, iGiant founder and presidentArtemis Westenberg, Explore Mars president, director and co-founderLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Mars? We've got the answers 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. If you're a space fan, people have probably asked you why it's so important that we get men and women to the Red Planet. Fear that question no longer. Join me on stage at the 2018 Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C., as eight brilliant Martians give us their diverse and inspiring responses. Also known simply as H2M, the summit

is the creation of Explore Mars, a nonprofit with a singular goal, keeping NASA, the political community, industry, and the general public focused on making sure there are humans standing on that world by 2033. This year's summit once more attracted such leaders and visionaries as Buzz Aldrin, new NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, and members of Congress, along with the scientists and engineers who are forging the needed tools and knowledge. But it also attracts artists, filmmakers, educators, motivators, podcast hosts, and other folks who share the dream. This was the third year I had the pleasure of hosting the live webcast, all of which can be enjoyed on the Explore Mars website. I also

moderated a couple of panels. What you're about to hear is the second of those panel discussions. Hello, everyone. This is the last panel on the last day of the Humans to Mars Summit. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, joined by the largest panel of the three days of H2M, and an amazing panel it is. So we have this terrific plan for how we were going to address the subject to close out H2M called Why Mars? We've got eight people, each of whom had up to three great answers for that question. And we were going to do this as sort of a lightning round.

Well, now it's going to be, what would be beyond lightning? I don't know, hyper lightning, hyper lightning. Okay. Because we need to get out of here because our leaders today, Artemis and Chris, and many of you have to get over to Capitol Hill. So we're going to jump into this and start getting through the comments. Now, you can be thinking about your reasons for why we need to put humans on Mars, and if we have time, we'll get to that. If not, you can submit them for the book that we're all going to write together. We're all going to submit essays, too. So, without further ado, treating this like the most crowded elevator speech of all time, we're going to go in alphabetical order. First, going from across

the pond to Nicholas Agnew, filmmaker, co-creator of that terrific film that we watched last night, Seat 25. Nick, you gave me the needs of the many, the needs of the one for the Star Trek fans out there. We stand on the shoulders of giants and perspective. Go ahead, extemporize. Sure. Well, I mean, I don't think I'll get through all of these, but one of the things that I feel as a storyteller is it's what science and what Mars represents symbolically to the broader public. And one of the things I feel is that society ought to be bigger than the individual, and it ought to represent, one of the things it ought to do is represent the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the individual and it ought to represent, one of the things it ought to do is represent the hopes and dreams and aspirations of the individual.

And as such, society's goals ought to be proportionately bigger than the individual's. And so the endeavor to put people on Mars says to an individual member of society, it gives them permission to dream big and it empowers them to follow their desires, their ambitions, and the things that are going to make them happy in life. I truly feel that if people feel happy and empowered, they will contribute more to society in return. The second point, standing on the shoulders of giants, is about human beings being a collaborative species.

And Mars needs to reinforce that idea, that even though only a handful of people are gonna step foot on Mars, it's the result of thousands of years of education, learning, and shared information. And then perspective. There's surely no better way to put the human species into perspective than to stand on what could well be a barren rock and look back at Carl Sagan's pale blue dot and go, there is every hope, every fear, every struggle, every prejudice, all love and all hate, and it's there. And that feeling of insignificance should be awe-inspiring,

far from making us feel lonely and unimportant. As far as we know, this organism floating around on this tiny speck in the vast cosmos is the only part of the universe made conscious, and that should give us a huge sense of responsibility. Well done, sir. About two minutes and seven seconds. So not only was he articulate and beautifully expressed, but he set the standard for length as well. Jeff Bingham, you have been closer to the center

of where space exploration really happens, which is right here inside the Beltway for so long. Jeff is a consultant but was a senatorial chief of staff and the associate administrator for legislative affairs at NASA. Jeff, you gave me Mars. It's not just a good idea. It's the law. And that it's as bipartisan as mom, apple pie, and baseball, and lastly, because we can.

Please. Thank you. Delighted to be here. And we can because we've laid the foundation. The foundation for the authority to go to Mars has been laid by 12 years of consistent, overwhelming, bipartisan support in the Congress. So we're on the way. And, you know, a lot of people have sat back and waited for the next election to see who's going to be the president or who's going to be the new administrator. And I just sort of calmly relaxed because I know where we're going. We're going to Mars.

We're going to do something at the moon on the way. But it's important to realize in a government program, the foundation is the policy. And the policy is well established and firmly embedded. For that reason, I'm very optimistic that there will be no change in that. You heard Senator Cruz the other day say much the same thing that was said in the 2010 Act, which started all of this, really put it on the road with the SLS and Orion. And the 2018 Act will undoubtedly say the same thing. The 2017 Act quoted the 2010 Act when it came to exploration. So there's consistent policy. In some ways, when we go up and talk to the hill,

we're preaching to the choir because they're on board. But it doesn't hurt to remind them. And so these visits are very important, and we all need to be focused on keeping that word and the goal in mind of a horizon objective of Mars. Well done. Thank you, Jeff. Jim Garvin, chief scientist from the Goddard Space Flight Center, helping to determine the kinds of science we will do there and build the tools that are going to get us there and back and help us live there.

You said I could really summarize all three of your excellent topics in two words, living dangerously. So I first like to say, what's wrong with a bright red dot? I mean, we think a pale blue dot is cool. I like that bright red dot. A lot of people follow the red. But really, we think a pale blue dot is cool. I like that bright red dot. A lot of people follow the red. But really, my points are really simple. We as human beings and scientists at heart, we like to follow the life. And so the first good place where we have the perfect storm of conditions, measurements, systems to follow that life is on Mars, beyond Earth. Of course, we're following it on Earth.

So to go there ourselves as we follow that life, bringing that life with us and watching our transformation in another place, a lifeboat for Earth maybe, or just maybe another place where life started, is as bold as anything we can say. I mean, it's almost a prime directive, to quote someone. Furthermore, I think there's another aspect of this that we have to remember as scientists, as engineers, as storytellers, and that is that we've put the investment in and Mars is calling. Come on. It is in our destiny. That program we reestablished in place in 2000 has reaped the benefits. We found the organics. There's more water on Mars than you can imagine on the ice rinks in the Stanley Cup playoffs. So I had to get that in. So I say, why not live dangerously?

Let's go. We're already there vicariously. Let's extend that reach to learn about this world that's going to tell us things that we can't learn here. So Mars is a learning experience, and as I like to tell the kids, never wait to wonder. Thank you, Jim. Live long and prosper. Abigail Harrison, better known as Astronaut Abby, she is the founder of the Mars Generation. Abby, you gave me three great ones. Because it's hard, the ultimate sandbox, and because we need a plan B. Take it, Abby. Mars is an opportunity that we really can't afford to pass up.

Mars is close enough to being impossible that it will really challenge us and our abilities in space exploration, but not difficult enough that it is impossible. And that's necessary because if we want to continue to make great strides in space exploration, we need to be truly pushing what we're comfortable with.

We need to be consistently putting ourselves in dangerous situations and asking ourselves, what's the next step that we can take? What's the next hill that we can go over? And Mars is that next step. Going there will help us to improve life on Earth by the leaps and bounds that we can't even imagine right now. In addition to that, it is the perfect sandbox, and that's not just because it's a dusty planet.

I like to think of the analogy of a sandbox because it's something that we can all look back on, some of us more recently than others, because Mars is that place where we can dip our toes in and we can explore and we can really try things out. It's close enough that, like I said, it's not impossible, but it's a place that we can practice exploring and searching for life, practice different geological techniques and whatnot. And all of these things that we want to do elsewhere, Mars is the perfect place to initially try them. So in conclusion, when you look at it, Mars is truly our gateway to the rest of our solar system and honestly the universe. And it's up to us to step through that.

I love it. Thank you, Abby, very much. We move on now to the Emmy award-winning Janet Ivey, creator, of course, of Janet's Planet, who was practicing what she preaches here, what, a couple of days ago with all those scouts, Girl Scouts that you brought by. Janet, you gave me dreaming beyond the desktop, I think thinking of school desktops, pushing back the boundaries,

and my favorite among these, for human ethical evolution. Janet? My great thing is, anytime I'm with a group of kids, is to really go, okay, guys, if we could go anywhere, and I could tell you we could go to Mars, who wants to go? They will all raise their hands. And I will tell you, there is something aspirational about that mission. It's inspirational, it's aspiration, and I always say it's going to lead to this innovation. And whatever we figure out going there can, by orders of magnitude, only be prosperous and amazing for planet Earth. One of the things that I say, and I'll make it personal, it's, you know, I've got a family member right now in hospice and stage four

cancer. And so whatever we figure out a way to create humans from being so bombarded or protected or impervious to radiation, think of how many of your family members we can heal. And so we'll start kind of having these conversations. So with the very young, what I mean by dream beyond their desktop, like just like we did on Tuesday with 43 Girl Scouts,

myself and the Challenger Center, we led them through this thing of creating Martian, you know, like with Play-Doh and 3D pens. And I will tell you that with eight, nine, 10-year-olds, I had them in one room. Challenger Center had our sixth, seventh, and eighth, and ninth graders in another room. What they were conceiving of, I would love to kind of like have a round table and have them present their ideas to all of you engineers. And you'd be like, we need to consider this one. So I think we get brilliance, we get genius. And then when they're creating,

they're really completely immersed in going, this is a purpose and a plan. Tony Wagner of Harvard says, and I'll say this quickly, it's like we must give our children a permission to play. And in the midst of their play, they may find their passion. And when they find their passion, they may very well find their purpose. And for me, my why Mars is purpose. The other question I'll ask is like, well, what do you think we'll be like when we go to Mars? I will say that it's like 95% of the time, they all agree that we will go and we will be better.

I said, better humans? They're like, we'll act better. I said, you'll act better. You will. Why? Well, we've had to collaborate so much. It's like, we'll have to be a team. And I said, better humans? They're like, we'll act better. I said, you'll act better. You will. Why? Well, we've had to collaborate so much. It's like, we'll have to be a team. And I said, but when you talk to folks who've done Mars analogs, they're like, wherever you go, there you are. You're still human. And so it's like, but these kids that I'm talking to and are aspiring and dreaming of Mars believe that we will have to evolve as a species in heart, spirit, mind, and soul, so that when those first six astronauts step out of that capsule and put their feet on the red planet, all of a sudden there's no race, there's no religion, there's no creed. They have just shared one shared experience. They have just all experienced the same thing. It is a clean slate,

a level playing ground, so we must give them Mars, everybody. Wonderful. Thank you, Janet. Please, listen, if you didn't think there was a good reason for why Mars, you surely are convinced by now. But wait, there's more. Kerry, you're up. Kerry Kukral is a bioengineer, ballet dancer, and the creator of Raw Science

and the Raw Science Film Festival, which I am a thrilled attendee at every year. You gave me because it will be the new Apollo moment, because it has at least almost been inviting us for years, and because existing as a typo civilization is becoming embarrassing. We often hear when talking about going to Mars, lots of people's responses will be, why are we putting resources on Mars when we need to fix Earth? When in reality, the Apollo program, there was an Apollo moment, and it was like an adrenaline shot into our technological development for computing and for electronics. In three to four decades after going to the moon,

initially we got there without even the power that runs a current cell phone, and now look what, how the whole world has changed because of computing and electronic development. Now as we go to Mars, the new Apollo moment will be biology. It will be, as Janet said, we will have to solve cancer to get to Mars. We will have to understand how to prevent it. We will have to understand how to repair our bodies with biotechnology and nanomedicine. So going to Mars will be that adrenaline shot for technological development of the human body. And what happens when we do that? Everything becomes cheaper.

Essentially, going to Mars will allow all of humanity to be able to live a longer, healthy life. And then, of course, the radio. We talked about it's almost always been inviting us. We've been able to see Mars with the human eye. Once we developed telescopes, we could see channels and ancient relics of water. When Marconi and Tesla were developing the radio, the first thing that Tesla did when he invented the radio,

which many people don't know, is try to communicate with Mars. He felt maybe there was life there and that he would, maybe it was trying to communicate with us. And the signal that he heard, which was a natural occurring signal somewhere in the universe, he thought maybe that that was Mars. So it's there. We can see it. We thought we could hear it. We should go. The final point about the Kardashev civilizations. Nikolai Kardashev is this amazing scientist who currently heads space research in Russia. And back in the 60s, he was a huge study advocate, and he did study searches with lasers and all sorts of things. And he developed, at that time, an amazing scale called the Kardashev civilization scale, based on how a civilization utilizes energy. And the type zero is only the

energy on their planet, and a type one utilizes the sun. And as zero is only the energy on their planet. And a type one utilizes the sun. And as you go up the scale, it expands to even greater levels of commands of space-time and matter. So by going to Mars and utilizing new sources of energy and the sun and nuclear fission,

we will level up. Thank you, Carrie. It's our time. It's humanity's time. We go now to my next-door neighbor here. Sarah Lynn Mark, MD, is the founder and president of iGiant. And Sarah Lynn, you gave me your three. Mars will reveal who we are.

Medicine will advance not just when earthlings become Martians, but when Martians make the trip back to Earth. And learning to live on Mars will make us safer, healthier, and more productive down here on the home planet. Sarah Lynn. Great. Thank you, Matt. I want to take about 120 seconds for all of you to think about sex in space. Think about that. Okay, now take that thought and move it a little forward to looking at the impact of sex and gender and how the body adapts in space. And that's what we're going to focus on for the rest of my 26 seconds. NASA actually pioneered the work in this area, and I had the privilege to serve NASA for about 18 years to look at these issues.

served NASA for about 18 years to look at these issues. Space is an extraordinary platform to see how the body adapts. And the body adapts very quickly and very dramatically. And what we learned is that men and women adapt very differently. And those small differences have huge, huge, profound impact. So going to Mars, and not just going, but living on the planet, will teach us so much. We have to learn how to live healthily and then we can take these messages back when we are Martians immigrating back to Earth. And so as we heard from some of my fellow Martians here, a lot of the technologies that we will develop will be able to be transferred to us living here on this planet.

We heard about many of the issues over the last few days, and I just want to highlight a few of them. When the body adapts in space, every single system adapts. Your brain adapts, your heart adapts, your bones and your muscles and your immune system. And that has profound impact on how we live. And when we go to Mars, every system is going to change, but we will learn to deal with it, to keep our Martians healthy. And just imagine taking those lessons back to Earth so that all of us who remain here, although I think my fellow Martians and I will be back on the planet, we have so much we can learn. And I think Mars is just a perfect venue for it. You are isolated. You just can't pop in a plane and come back to your old home. So we have to learn how to take care of everybody.

And I think it also democratizes the planet for us because we'll all be at risk and we will all have to take care of each other. And it doesn't matter what age or race or sex or gender. In fact, we heard this morning, diversity is what counts. So I'm not talking about who's better, faster, smarter. We're talking about human beings going to a new planet and bringing what we can to that planet and taking it back to

our old home. I want to take this group on the road because I cannot imagine a better group of folks to explain from all of the different disciplines that you represent why Mars. all of the different disciplines that you represent. Why Mars? We finish now with the woman who is as responsible as anyone else for the opportunity we've all had over the last three days, Artemis Westenberg. You are the president, director, and co-founder of Explore Mars. Thank you for all of this. First of all, you had a couple of great reasons why Mars, You had a couple of great reasons why Mars, which I summarized as all hands on deck and to form a more perfect union. Artemis.

Why Mars? Well, it is our nearest and our best chance to establish a better society. Because if we're on Mars with this small group at first, then it will make no difference what your background is. Did you come from a rich family or a very poor family? It will make no difference on Mars. What's your gender?

Again, immaterial. Skin color? Totally immaterial. What type of job you're doing on Mars? Also immaterial. Why? Every task, however menial, will be important in making us all, as a group, survive and thrive on Mars. And what's so nice about Mars, it's far away. At least 56 million kilometers, but most of the time much further. That means that if on earth they start

screaming at us, because we are establishing this new society with our own rules, they can scream all they want. One, it will take a while before we hear them, but even if we hear them, we can choose not to reply. Because what can they do? Even if we would return to Earth, do you honestly think that the 9 billion other Earthlings will prevent you from letting us reenter? We will be the heroes. So it is our chance to start a new society,

and I think we should. Thank you, Artemis. Lovely finish for at least hearing this portion. But by my count, you've all done so incredibly well. We may have about five minutes left. So if anyone has anything to add, or if any of you in the audience, and we may only be able to take two or three of you, want to add your reason why Mars, then please step up to the microphone now. Let me ask you, first of all, after all of those passionate statements, how many of you would go? We're already there. Okay. Not surprising that's unanimous. All right. Anybody out there in the audience? Okay. Do any of you have anything that you want to add? I would love to jump in and add something. So I would build off of what I've heard from my fellow panelists so far and take it one step further by saying, not only are we going to Mars

right now for ourselves and for the things that it will do for Earth, but that we owe it to the next generation to do this. So that the people who aren't even yet born can have these same ideals that we've been talking about today and that that can be their reality. I think we can all agree that that's something that we'd like to see happen. We've heard it here in different ways. Mars is its own microbial universe, perhaps. And if we could figure that one out, however we do, women and men there, labs, samples, all the stuff we want to do, that learning moment, realizing we're not alone, or weren't alone, second genesis, whatever you like, will be as transformative as all the other things we're saying. It will be a new society, not just in the Kennedy sense of the word. So

I think that's another reason why that destination right now, amidst the many wonderful ones, is so compelling. Sir, in the audience. Yes, I once was invited to give a speech on Mars, and I talked about what I called species-ending events, like a nuclear war, a big comet hit, things like that. If we're not on another planet, Shakespeare, our music, our culture, our humanity, our literature, it's all gone. Do you remember that movie Forbidden Planet when Walter Pidgeon there with the krill? And he knew it was a great civilization and he understood parts of it, but not too much. And some other race or beings come and they find a burned out world and they said, leave that place. We have to be on another planet to ensure the survival of our species.

Watch out for those monsters from the id. Abby, you kind of had addressed this saying we need to be a multi-planet species. But that sounds like bringing along everything we've learned, all of our gathered knowledge as well, the Encyclopedia Galactica, or the Hitchhiker's Guide, if you will. Absolutely. Hi, we'll go right over here. Yes, sir. Yeah, hi. Kirby Runyon, Johns Hopkins University. One thing that I don't think is talked about a lot is that Mars needs to experience what it's like to have humans on it. Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing Mars a bit there, but this speaks to how no matter what,

how good virtual reality gets, that is simply sensory input into our brains. Nothing will ever replace the act of going somewhere and having that place receive us. I don't know that there's much of a response to that, but I've never heard that point articulated, and that's something that motivates me. Any comments, panels? You can say here, here, or Lynn. I think it's a very important comment, and I think, one, it's the planetary protection. We need to protect that planet and hopefully honor it and take care of it. Sometimes I think all of us get very upset and concerned when Mother Nature is injured by what we do.

And so I hope we take the lessons that we've learned here and we do better. And we provide an opportunity for future generations to be able to survive and thrive and honoring the planet that we're going to. Anyone else in our last couple of minutes? I'd just like to say and to embellish wonderful comments by Sarah Lynn. So think of what Alfred Russell Wallace said about the island species problem. Mars is an island in our universe, in our solar system,

and really, we need to take care of it, because if there is that microbial world, or whatever it is, it's calling us, but we also have to protect it and respect it, because we'll learn from it, as Abby and others said. So I agree with you, It's great to be there. And I would just submit also, we already are there. So in some sense, what you said, we haven't reconciled it, but we have gone. Last question. You have 24 seconds, sir. Go. Wow. Okay. My name's

Bruce Costa. I'm the least qualified person to be here this week. And something's been driving me nuts for years. If this was an NFL event, we wouldn't be here. We'd need a stadium, a billion dollar facility, it would be sold out. People want to pay through the nose to watch millionaires in tights give each other brain damage. I mean, I'm just a Star Trek fan, and I can't believe the privilege it's felt like to be here this week among you and these brilliant leaders of our species. What are people getting? Is it our fault,

and is it really just a poor communication effort on our part? Let me run with that. I don't get it. First of all, there's nothing, there is no such thing as just a Star Trek fan. Thank you for being here. Right on.

That's true. You need the cue. Janet? So to your point, and I experienced this last year doing a lot of eclipse evangelism. It is time for all of us to take it on very personally, and you heard some of the social media stuff. We must be science's best advocates. And it was really neat in my home city of Nashville.

I could, one day I was getting gas, somebody recognized me from some of the things I was doing on television locally there, and they're like, come in, we've got some questions about the eclipse. So I go in and I'm literally holding court, talking about the eclipse in a circle K. So I go in and I'm literally holding court, talking about the eclipse in a circle K. When we start to have conversations and it starts to be at the dinner table or at breakfast or brunch and we're going, oh my gosh, did you hear the latest about Mars? And so, yes, I do believe that it's like your being here is very important because you can now go and talk about it and hopefully you'll share it.

I agree that I wish that it were like, you know, the Super Bowl of, you know, of events and everything. But I think every time that we have this conversation and we continue to talk about it, share it, tweet it, it's really on our shoulders to be Mars' best advocate and to go out there and be ambassadors for that planet we will one day inhabit. I wish we had another hour for this, but we are out of time. Can she just, 30 seconds?

You want to? Artemis, if it's okay with you, we'll take one more. She's the one who's gotta go somewhere high. Please, go ahead. Thank you. My name is Nancy Wolfson, and I am a researcher for humans and social factors for space colonization. First of all, thank you so much for being here.

I appreciate that all of you are from different fields of expertise, so I think that that's a very important step. Don't you think that maybe the next step is us, as a specialist in the space, changing our words and statements, and instead of being so focused on the technical aspects and asking everybody to become a scientist or a specialist or very focused on technical aspects maybe telling them you as a mother don't have to do anything else or as a father or just as a as a painter or something else, don't have to do anything else to be connected to space.

Might be just one step to close the gap between space and the general public. Yes. My boss is Bill Nye, the science guy. He would absolutely agree with you. And this is coming from a researcher, so I understand. And there are many more steps that all of us in this field should be

taking, obviously. Anyone have anything to add to that? Just on that, just as a storyteller and so an outsider to the science community, I agree with you that actually people just need to be engaged and know more than that. But what I have found particularly exciting,

having made the film on my journey through making the film to this point, is how open the science community is and how supportive the science community is. And I think that needs to be communicated as well, that the science community is so approachable, and it's been so heartening to find that. We've come up, the science community has come a long ways. Jim and then Jeff. I was just going to say, everything we're doing is art. It's the art of engineering, the art of being there, the art of exploring. It's just how you look at it.

We geeks look at it strangely. Thank you for telling us, though, because the poetry and music and other artistic, the dance of it is there, too. Jeff, last word. I just want to make a quick plug for the movie tonight. If you want to get a good sense of the policy cauldron that results in space programs, come and watch that movie. Fight for Space. It's a terrific documentary, and it really gives you why Mars. Thank you, everyone. Chris Carberry, the CEO of Explore Mars and co-founder. Yeah, I just also wanted to thank

Matt. Matt has been helping to, you know, narrate the whole conference. Done a spectacular job. So thank you, Matt. Thank you for the whole panel. This has been a great final panel for the conference, but Matt's been helping to really energize the conference for the last few years. I don't think we thank you

enough moving forward. Thank you. Time for What's Up on Planetary Radio. Bruce Betts is the chief scientist for the Planetary Society. He is here to talk to us once again about the night sky, and we can go straight into it. I should have warned you.

It might be sort of an abbreviated version this time. Okay, let's go really fast. We've got Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars up in the sky. All right, I'll slow it down a little bit. Venus in the evening, low in the west. Well, not that low right now, looking super bright. If you pick this up right after it comes out, you can see the moon near

Venus on the 17th. Venus will be moving towards Gemini or appearing to be moving towards the Gemini twins, Castor and Pollux. As it does so, on the 27th of May, there'll be a nice line between the bright star Procyon and then Venus right in the middle, and then Capella over another bright star over on the right, Castor and Pollux up above. We had Jupiter over in the east in the early evening looking also very, very bright, and coming up in the middle of the night, Saturn followed by Mars. We move on to this week in space history. It was 2010 that the Icarus spacecraft was launched, along with Akatsuki towards Venus,

and Icarus became the first successful solar sailing mission launched by the Japanese. Yeah, very innovative. Pretty cool spacecraft. We move on to... Random space fact. Just trying to innovative. Pretty cool spacecraft. We move on to... Just trying to help out. Thank you. Going a little bit of a different direction than usual. In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Harry is said to have seen Venus sometime soon after 11 p.m., but that is impossible because we can never see Venus during the middle hours of the

night because it's closer to the sun than we are. Just thought you'd want to know. I should have caught that because my daughters mostly read those books out loud to their mom and me. That one escaped me. I will have to point it out to them and they may never speak to me again. And don't take the answer. It's just magic. Indeed. All right. We move on to the trivia contest. I asked you what star is most commonly referred to as the demon star? How'd we do, Matt?

Wow. We really recovered in terms of entries this time around. Lots and lots of you got into the contest this time. We got an entry chosen by random.org from Elijah Marshall in Leighton, Australia, who was complaining just a couple of months ago, why don't we ever have winners from Australia? Well, first of all, I told him we have, and now we have another, I think. He says Algal is usually referred to as the demon star.

It translates as Arabic for head of the ghoul or ogre. Is he correct? That is correct. Good on you, Elijah. Did people talk about why it's called the demon star? No, please go ahead. Some of them did, but I just love hearing it from you. Oh, because of its variable nature, it goes up and down in brightness by a factor of three.

So it's usually three times brighter. It dips in brightness every 2.86 days, and it is an eclipsing binary. It's actually two stars. We're looking at it edge on, and when the dimmer one gets in front of the brighter star, it actually dips, and the whole system, as seen from Earth, dips in brightness by a factor of three. Pretty cool stuff. We have also this from Alex Lee in Athens, Georgia. He says about the demon star, it's in the constellation Perseus, one you've been talking about quite a bit lately. The constellation is supposed to represent Perseus

holding Medusa's severed head with Algol as Medusa's eyes. So it's still in keeping with that demonic theme. Finally, from several people, including Gabriel Eggers and Craig Balog, they said, sharing the same etymology as Al Ghul, that is head of the Ghul, Raz Al Ghul is a popular foe of Batman from the DC Comics universe. It's true. Liam Neeson played him. Well, then I am scared. Be afraid. Be very afraid because I am looking for you. I hear he's got a certain skill set. Never mind. Release the Kraken. Move on.

So Elijah Marshall won himself a Planetary Radio t-shirt. It's pretty cool. You can check it out at chopshopstore.com in the Planetary Society store. Check it out at chopshopstore.com in the Planetary Society store. And a 200-point itelescope.net account from that worldwide network of nonprofit telescopes. 200 points worth a couple hundred bucks. He can donate that, too, to a school or some other nonprofit organization that might be able to make use of it. And that's what we're going to have for the winner of the next contest that Bruce is about to tell us about. for the winner of the next contest that Bruce is about to tell us about. Who was the first person to orbit the moon alone in his spacecraft? Go to planetary.org slash radio contest. You guys should be able to get this one right. You'll need to get it and get it to us by Wednesday, the 23rd of May at 8 a.m. Pacific time. Win yourself that shirt and 200.iTelescope.net account.

We're done. All right, everybody, go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about your favorite inflatable planet. Thank you, and good night. You know, the problem with inflatable planets is coming up with a patch when they spring a leak. That's Bruce Betts. He's the chief scientist of the Planetary Society who's dying to tell me as soon as we're done here that there really is no such thing as a...

Anyway, he joins us every week here for What's Up. If I missed you at H2M, I hope to see you at the International Space Development Conference in Los Angeles, May 24 to 27. Information is at nss.org. Planetary Radio is produced by the Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and is made possible by its Martian members. Mary Liz Bender is our associate producer. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which was arranged and performed by Peter Schlosser. I'm Matt Kaplan, at Ares.