The Infinite Monkey Cage - Exploring our solar system

Episode Date: November 19, 2022

The Infinite Monkey Cage teleports to California for this special episode recorded at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They are joined by comedian and talk-show host Conan O'Brien, alongside JPL's Dr Katie Stack Morgan and Dr Kevin Hand, and discuss the incredible missions that are hunting for signs of life within our own solar system. From the iconic Mars Rovers currently exploring the martian surface, to amazing future missions to Jupiter's icy moon Europa, the panel discuss the tantalising prospect of finding signs of life this close to home, and the incredible engineering and ingenuity that goes into planning these missions.Producer: Alexandra Feachem

In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Welcome to the Infinite Monkey Cage. I'm Robin Ince. And I'm Brian Cox. Today we are at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California,

a place that has been at the centre of the robotic exploration of the solar system since the dawn of the space age. This is where the most iconic missions have been conceived and constructed and controlled. JPL designed and built the first US satellite, Explorer 1, launched on January 31st, 1958, and followed that first flight with Ranger, Mariner, Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, to name just a few. JPL's spacecraft are legends to anyone who loves the exploration of space.

Today, JPL is operating, amongst others, the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter, and with Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on Mars, and constructing future missions, including the Europa Clipper to Jupiter's moon Europa, a possible home for life. And I can tell you that Brian Cox has never been happier than he is this morning. The only reason he went into science communication was to get closer to space rockets. That's what you say. Let's get the keys to go and see the space rockets.

He has just been smiling and giggling for the whole morning. By the way, that's his impression of me. Oh, no, it's not. My impression of you is the universe is filled with the shiniest things, but you'll all die. Anyway, so... It's comforting when you say it like that, isn't it? Yeah, it is. That's the thing. Brian Cox is great for just giving any time you've got bad news,

like the idea that the universe is finite, get him to say it, because it just sounds really warm and nice. You know, oh, good. I'm glad our galaxy is going to collide with Andromeda and destroy everything. Anyway, so today we are going to discuss two of those missions designed to answer the great existential questions. Now, this is one of the things as well. Brian, in one of his books, actually said that a little existential anxiety is good for the soul.

And I said to him, have you actually ever had existential anxiety? And he went, no, I'm a physicist. So we will be asking, are we alone in the universe as we speak the perseverance rover and ingenuity helicopter are on mars taking samples characterizing the geology and searching for signs of ancient life perhaps the ancient life that of course visited the earth to build the pyramid um is that not true that was oh okay good and that was that worried this audience for a moment though though, I can tell you. So we have an incredible panel today

joining us to discuss some of these beautiful ideas, which, as you told me as well, the beautiful JPL phrase, that one of the things to do is to dare mighty things, and this is a place where truly mighty things are being dared. So to discuss this... Yes. Yes. are being dead. So to discuss this, yes. So joining us to discuss these two fascinating missions are an astrobiologist, an astrogeologist, and the man who's written some of the most

important words in history, including mmm, forbidden donut. And they are... My name is Katie Stack Morgan, and I am a research scientist here at JPL and the Deputy Project Scientist of the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission. And the most daring thing that JPL has done, well, aside from the herd of animatronic deer that inhabit the lab, I'll have to go with landing and operating and launching a flagship Mars rover mission during a global pandemic. It doesn't get much better than that.

And my name is Kevin Hand. I'm an astrobiologist and planetary scientist here at JPL and author of the popular science book, Alien Oceans. And I'm going to mention something mighty that I hope that someday we will dare to do. Obviously, we're getting ready to launch the Europa Clipper mission, which is a dare mighty things mission. But I hope that someday we will commit to daring a truly mighty thing of landing on the surface of that ice-covered ocean world, Europa, to search for signs of life. Hello, my name is Conan O'Brien.

I am a comedian, a writer for such shows as The Simpsons, Saturday Night Live, a performer, a string theorist, I think. Now, why is that amusing? Why is that not even possible? I think the most daring thing that JPL has ever done is let me into their perimeter with the knowledge of my criminal past. JPL, that took guts. I congratulate you. This is our panel.

See, all I saw when you said string theorist was a man being tangled up in his own marionette. I assumed that was what string theory was. Katie, can I just ask you before we get started on the main meat of the show, this animatronic deer thing, because that got a laughter of recognition from the audience. What is the story of the animatronic deer? I mean, we all know about the animatronic deer here at JPL. I mean, they kept the lab running during the pandemic while we were all off and doing Zoom. They were really building and operating our spacecraft for us. No, but we have a very comfortable herd of deer here at JPL.

They have made the lab their own. And, you know, we do robotic things here. And so there's a theory that perhaps we created these deer. Can I just explain? This is like Santa's workshop. This is the image to get it financed, isn't it? If they imagine Kurt Russell as Father Christmas as well doing some of the work, everyone's happy.

For the conspiracy theorists listening, it is a joke. can i just make that clear but you know what i would say if you're going to be a conspiracy theorist and you decide you know what i'm not going to go with flat earth or we didn't land on the moon i'm going to go with the fact that rockets are built by deer i i feel we're making a more benevolent conspiracy theory than a lot of the more insidious ones. Katie, you mentioned Perseverance, Mars 2020. So what's Perseverance doing now as we speak? Yes, as we speak, we are, the Perseverance rover is exploring the ancient delta that's present in this ancient impact crater on the surface of Mars. And we're planning a drive today to get to a rock that we hope to look closer, more closely at, possibly a braid and sample. to get to a rock that we hope to look more closely at,

possibly a braid and sample, and one day those samples that we collect will potentially come back to Earth. So the drive today, can you describe what that process is? So every day there's a rover on Mars. How difficult is it? How do you get it to drive? How do you tell it to do what it's going to do? Well, first we have to decide scientifically what's interesting. Where do we want to drive to? We have to pick a destination. And so usually that falls on the scientists to weigh in on that and say,

we like this rock here or this outcrop here. And then we hand it over to the engineers and ask them, well, how can you get us there? And can you get us there? And so then there's a back and forth between the scientists and engineers to figure out, OK, well, can we get where the scientists want to go? And if not, can we adjust and pick a new location? But today, fortunately, the place that we are driving to is pretty close, only about two meters away. So that should be a pretty straightforward drive for us to plan. Two meter drive. Yes. The bigger question here is, has someone in your group ever lobbied for a certain rock as opposed to another rock,

and you go way out of your way to go to that rock, and then it's just a shit rock? A rock that's easily found anywhere on Earth within five feet of where you're standing. Well, there are no such thing as shit rocks on Mars. Every rock is good. Okay, I see how this is going to go. I see where this group is right now. I disagree. I've done my own research. There are shit rocks on Mars. There are rocks that you've seen before,

and there are times where you're in the lab and you're looking at a rock you've seen nine other times. What would be a good rock, then? If we accept there are times where you're in the lab and you're looking at a rock you've seen nine other times. What would be a good rock then? If we accept there are no shit rocks, what would be an excellent rock as opposed to just a quite good rock? Well, I think any scientist on the mission would have a different opinion about what the best rock could be. But Perseverance is seeking signs of ancient life on Mars,

and so we're looking for rocks that are really good at preserving signs of ancient life. And not every rock is the best for preserving signs of ancient life. And so we are looking for mudstones, fine-grained rocks that have the potential to preserve and concentrate organic matter and possibly preserve signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. So, Kevin, in terms of what are you looking for when you're looking for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars. So Kevin, in terms of what are you looking for when you're looking for signs of life, what is the kind of image that our audience should be imagining? Well, it depends on where we're going to search for those signs of life. And this is where it's interesting to kind of compare and contrast our search for life on Mars with our

search for life on worlds like Europa, where on Mars, as Katie mentioned, we're going to be bringing back these rock cores to search for organic compounds that might be evidence of ancient lipids from the membranes of microbes that may have once inhabited Mars. But in those very old rocks on Mars, we're never going to find living life and we're never going to find something analogous to DNA or large biomolecules. And so we won't really be able to tell that much about how that life works. It would still be a tremendously profound discovery to find signs of life, those compounds in those ancient rocks on Mars. But to really revolutionize our understanding of biochemistry and whether or not there are separate origins of life in our own solar system, whether

or not the origin of life is easy or hard, we have to go to places where life could be alive today, extant life, where someday we might have the hope of seeing a microbe swimming around in a little puddle of Europan ocean water that we've collected. And the discovery of extant life would allow us to see whether or not DNA, RNA, proteins, the way our life organizes, whether or not that's the only game in town or if there's a different way to get the business of life done. I think just for balance, I think you might be being slightly biased. I don't want to cause a fight already,

but as author of Ancient Oceans, Searching for Life on Europa. Are you thinking of subsurface life on Mars? Well, that was one of the questions. So are we really ruling out the fact that there may be deep in water deposits below the surface today that may still be Martian-like? I don't think we can rule it out. I'd be curious to hear Katie's thoughts on this. But right now, we don't have any evidence for liquid water on Mars. It's a theory.

on Mars. It's a theory. Whereas on Europa, we have strong evidence for a global liquid water ocean that contains two to three times the volume of all the liquid water on Earth. And that's, if we've learned anything from life on Earth, it's that where you find the liquid water, you find life. Kate? Well, in my book, Ancient Crust, no, just kidding. I don't have a book. But one of the great things about searching for ancient life on Mars is that we have a lot of big open questions about the development of life here on Earth, our development. And what's really great about Mars is that the Mars rock record preserves that period of time when life was emerging here on Earth.

But actually that rock record is better preserved on Mars. And so we have the potential by studying the ancient rock record of Mars to learn not only about development of life on another planet, but also how life on our own planet evolved and developed. And is there any chance for the impatient that Perseverance may see some kind of smoking gun, that there was life on Mars? Or do we have to really wait for the sample return? So we often talk about the proverbial Martian dinosaur bone or the little green men, that type of thing. But our expectation is that if life

arose on Mars, it was of the microbial variety. And it's actually quite hard to preserve microbes in rocks. And so the kinds of things that we look for when we're searching for ancient life on Mars or even here on Earth is how those microbes interacted with their environment. What fingerprint did they leave behind in the rocks based on how they responded and reacted to the environment? So we talk about things like fossilized ancient microbial mats, and there are certain characteristics we can look for that could tell us, all right, this is something that life was involved with, or no, this is something that could have been formed without life. So we're

looking for something, I think, a little more subtle than the Martian dinosaur bone. Well, I just have to cut in and say that I speak for the average Joe on Earth who grew up on science fiction movies, and we are hungry for a real E.T., an alien. And when you guys tell us it's going to be one cell or two cells, if you have a powerful atomic microscope, you can see it. That does not fill the bill. We have all grown up on these movies, and we are hungry. And I think if you want this funding to continue, which I think is at the core of all the work we are doing here,

we've got to come up with an alien that says gleep, glorp, and has a ship and has a gun that's trying to destroy our world, but we destroy him before he can destroy us. That's what we need. Enough with the one the one cell two cell it's getting us nowhere i thank you good night how about further to that because i think we should so in terms of all the movie space aliens tv space aliens who were brought up with which is the one that you think would most help funding at JPL? There's an episode of the original Star Trek where Kirk goes down to the planet and he has to do battle with a, I think it's called a Gorn. Is anyone here going to help me with this?

Really, a bunch of rocket scientists. And no one's seen the original Star Trek. Okay, what a damning indictment of this institution. Anyway, it's essentially an actor in a rubber suit that looks like a lizard, and they fight each other on the planet, and then Kirk figures out how to assemble a crude TNT, and he uses that to defeat the alien. That's the alien I think Americans are looking for.

I know that we're talking to the whole world right now, but as an American, I'm obsessed with Americans and what we want. We want some kind of lizard-y thing that is stronger than a human and has technology that's far beyond our own. That's what we need. Kevin, you said octopus, I think. Well, these alien oceans out there, Europa, Enceladus, even Saturn's moon Titan, there is the possibility that there may be more than just microbes in these oceans. And a lot of that is contingent on how far Darwinian evolution may have gotten on those worlds.

And so one of the interesting things about Europa is that its surface is bombarded by this electrons and ions, this radiation from Jupiter's magnetosphere, and that creates oxygen in the ice. And some of that oxygen could get into the ocean below. And what we've learned about the evolution of macrofauna, of lizards and octopi and other things on Earth, is that it required this transition to an oxygenated atmosphere. And so in my dream of dreams, Europa's ocean actually has enough oxygen in it to kind of biologically motivate multicellular life. So it's not out of the question, Conan, that there could be alien octopi out there. I'm feeling compelled to defend the single cellular organisms now. But I mean, what's more frightening than a single cell that is suddenly not just a single cell?

I mean, there have also been movies about that. Yes. First of all, and I did not mean to offend you in any way, Katie, and I apologize. My qualm with you is mostly about what do we do when we run out of names for these roaming machines on different planets? Because when I heard the name Perseverance, I thought they're running out of names. Perseverance just implies, I know I'm not the best, but I'm going to try. I'm going to really try my best. Aw, Perseverance. At least it's not

an acronym. Very nice. Very nice. But I worry that we're like eight years away from the hard to discourage just touchdown. No, this brings up a concern I do have, Katie, which is your team is working on bringing samples

back to Earth. Now, as you know, I'm obsessed with everything I've learned from television and movies. When you take anything from another planet and you bring it back to Earth, it's a matter of months before it's destroyed us. What precautionary measures are you taking to make sure that that does not happen? Yes, well, fortunately, the Perseverance Rover mission doesn't have to worry about that, because our job is just to collect the samples. But there are people, and people here on lab, who think and take planetary protection very, very seriously. And so there are precautions in place, and there

are tests in place, and special facilities that we build to protect against such a horrific possibility. But yes, it is something that we take very protect against such a horrific possibility. But yes, it is something that we take very seriously, and it's something that NASA takes very seriously. Good, because when I heard that, I don't think I've slept since I heard that you were going to be taking what could be unknown organisms and rocks that seem interesting and strange to us and bringing them to Earth. It seems like a recipe for disaster.

And we have many problems here on Earth as is. We have organisms here on Earth that are running things that shouldn't be. And I worry about finding more on other planets. So I'm glad that you're doing the work and everyone here is doing the work to make sure we're not destroyed. But it's worth, Katie, could you outline the sample return mission? Because it is fascinating. Because there are two parts to Perseverance's mission, aren't there?

There's the geology and the biology it's doing now on Mars, and then the return of those samples. That's right. So Perseverance is doing an in-situ exploration of the rocks on Mars, but that is in service to identifying and collecting the most scientifically compelling samples that is in service to identifying and collecting the most scientifically compelling samples that could come back to Earth. So Perseverance's job is to identify those samples, collect those samples, and then there

are a series of follow-on missions that will help get those samples back to Earth. And so the architecture is evolving very rapidly here, and they're very much in the design and development phase of that. But right now, the idea is that there will be a follow-on lander to come, and then possibly other mission architecture that may help in collecting and picking up those samples and getting them to the sample return lander, or Perseverance may do the job itself if it's still alive and kicking then. And then those samples will be blasted off the surface of Mars with a rendezvous

to an orbiter. And then that orbiter would come back to Earth. So it's a complex series of missions, but each individual piece we know how to do, we've done before. It's a matter of stringing them together. Yeah, when I first heard about sample return, it is, you know, you said, Robin, dare mighty things. It's a really ambitious and complicated thing, isn't it, to get that rock back into... And it lands in Utah, doesn't it? So following on from what you just said, Conan, it's only in Utah that anyone needs to worry.

It would be hilarious if they got the rock all the way from Mars to Earth, but then they couldn't get it through customs here. Just TSA, you know, getting involved. Because I can't get toothpaste,ades you know from one part of the country or the other so the fact that you're getting a rock from Mars here I think is very impressive but is this is it is it right Kevin that this is the going to be the first actual you know sample of extraterrestrial rocks since Apollo missions well we have brought back things

like stardust from previous missions that have gone out into space and collected pieces. We've also got Osiris-Rex that is en route to returning a sample from an asteroid. But these are the first samples that are being specifically returned to look for signs of ancient life. And that's tremendously exciting. When we think about the vast population of the universe, it's a transformative moment potentially, because if life is out there, then we instantaneously transform not just our own solar system, but all the stars that we see into a biological universe. Because whether or not we discover life on Mars or life on Europa or Enceladus or Titan or what have you, that gives us this indication that life arose twice in our own backyard,

and therefore life should arise wherever the conditions are right. Conan, with that, the discovery of single cells, all joking aside, what would that mean to you? Would you find that to be a tremendous moment? Yeah, I think it would be huge. I mean, all kidding aside, I think it would be massive. I think it would have lots of implications. I think there's going to have theological implications on Earth, because I think there's a huge element of the human being that wants to think we are it. We are the divine selection. We are the one God created us. And when

you start finding organisms on other planets, that might topple that apple cart for some people. I don't think it should be exclusive. I think life on other planets shouldn't rattle people's beliefs, but it may. And so it's huge. It would be massive. I'm still going to go back to my desire, my deep desire that it's an alien, I'm still going to go back to my desire, my deep desire, that it's an alien, an alien with some kind of ship and some grand design to destroy us, but we defeat it in the end. And if you film it, it lasts about an hour and 40 minutes. But that's just my own bias.

But I think it would be huge. I was wondering, Katie, in the early days, in terms of deciding what you're going to target, because there was a period of time, wasn't there, when after early investigation of Mars, it was kind of just said, oh, there's nothing, nothing's going to happen. And there had to be quite arguments, I think, to say we need to keep looking at Mars. What was it that managed to keep that investigation going on? Well, I think many people have thought for decades that Mars is largely a volcanic planet.

And again, volcanoes, they can create some potential habitable environments, but the kind of temperatures and pressures that are reached in those kinds of processes are not particularly conducive to life. And so I think it's two things that really changed the focus on Mars. And so one was the recognition that Mars is not just a volcanic planet, but it has a sedimentary rock record. So a rich record of sedimentary surface processes involving primarily water as wind as well, but water being a really important part of that. And there's been speculation for 100, 200 years that water was present on Mars. But I think even just in the past 20 years, 20, 30 years, we've made major advances in understanding the presence of water on Mars, the extent of those reservoirs.

And then I think the other thing was really the meteorite, ALH 84001, and the tantalizing potential of that meteorite from Mars to have signs of ancient life. I think ultimately now, decades later, the community is largely in agreement that there weren't signs of ancient life, although, you know, folks still question that. But I think that potential of life in that meteorite really kicked off the past two decades of searching for life on Mars and recognizing that that potential is there and it's worth and with the diversity we've now recognized on the surface of Mars and how similar Mars might have once been to our own planet really increasing the interest in searching for signs of ancient life on Mars. But we are talking about something like three and a half billion years ago.

That's right yeah the rocks that Perseverance is exploring in Jezero Crater they range from probably about three and a half billion years to as old as four a little older than four billion years. It's a remarkable idea isn't it? It's remarkable that you can think that we might be able to discern signs that something lived on Mars but three and a half to four billion years ago. That's a tremendous idea. Yeah, and that's where preservation becomes really important because not every environment on Earth or on Mars was capable of preserving the science of ancient life. So that's why we get really excited when we see things like salt minerals. Salt minerals are really good for actually preserving and fossilizing signs of ancient life here on Earth and presumably on Mars as well. And so we have a very targeted focus search when we're

looking at the rocks on Mars, and not any rock will do in some cases. I mean, you were asking. Katie, we have to bury the hatchet here. I feel I got off on the wrong foot with you, and I apologize. I applaud you and the work you do, and I think there's some killer rocks out there. No, I was supporting what you were saying in the sense that not every rock is equal in its potential. I was going by your tone more than what you were saying. Had kind of a shove-off idiot tone to it, which everyone here seemed to think was appropriate. I had a question for you, which is, it's very human to anthropomorphize objects. We all do it. You have a car, you've had it for a while on my Volkswagen Jetta, and then you become emotionally attached to it.

I know it sounds like a silly question, but it's really not. You send these rovers out, they go, now I don't know the numbers, but I'm just going to guess, hundreds of thousands of miles. It's probably very close to, and they land on Mars. Do you end up having, this sounds crazy, but that's our rover. You know, you get attached to them in a way, don't you? Oh yeah, absolutely. It's not just a machine, a collection of pieces of metal and silicon, and I know a lot of copper is used, I'm guessing. There's pieces of rubber. I should stop when I don't know things, but my guess is that you get attached to them, because even me as a fan, I get attached to these machines, and then I start to think,

fan, I get attached to these machines. And then I start to think, oh, we're just, we're leaving it there and it's going to be lonely. And I go down these rabbit holes. Is that common? Does that happen to the people here at JPL? Do you get, feel emotional about it? It does. Absolutely. And actually, but the love with your spacecraft is different every time, I think. I worked on the Curiosity mission and I can pinpoint the moment I realized I had feelings for the rover. Feelings of caring for the rover. Did the rover say, stop texting me? Thankfully, it has not ghosted me yet. Is it inappropriate?

But, I mean, there was the real feeling of, and it was actually during an operations readiness test. Before Curiosity had landed, we were doing a test, a simulation of the mission. And I realized I was a grad student at that point. I'd come in relatively late into the process. And so I thought, oh, of course this is going to land and it's going to be fine. And then we were running this test and I was really feeling in the moment of this is what it's like to be on a rover mission. And I realized, wow, I care about this mission and I care about this rover and I care about what happens with, with the Perseverance rover. I came on and of course that's linked to a lot of other things

for me, my, my career and livelihood and that type of thing. So there are certainly deep feelings there. But we often, I mean, I say we, and that refers to the rover. I mean, I feel like it is an extension of me and how I think and what I do. And I think that's true for our team of thousands who have worked on this mission. So there is a deep connection, I think, that many of us feel to the robotic missions that we work on. I did. I'll say just as a civilian and clearly someone doesn't know much about anything. But I when I watched Perseverance Land, which was live-streamed, I'm not an emotional person. I never cry.

I learned that from my father. And I recommend it. It's a great way to go through life. But when you guys achieved success and it was live-streamed, I teared up. I was very emotional about it. I thought it was an absolutely incredible achievement, and it made me feel better about, you know, we've all had a difficult time here on Earth as of late, and it just made me feel better about things. It was really inspirational. Yeah, I also burst into tears when Perseverance landed. I didn't realize how much stress and

anxiety I had about the landing, and I think I was in this kind of mode of denial leading up to it, because it is a very stressful, I cannot imagine the stress that everyone here feels if you've been working on a project like this for years and it comes down to everything has to happen in a certain microsecond and we've done the math and yes it should work but then there's just I don't know I'm sure you have moments of just, I don't know. We don't know what's going to happen. Clearly you don't. No one here went along with that.

But I just think it's when you have that moment of, yes, this is working, it's talking back to us, and it's going to do what we asked it to do, and we've pulled this off. That just must be the most exhilarating feeling in the world, I would think. Yeah, it really is, and it really hit me this time with Perseverance too, given my role on that mission. But at the same time, you celebrate, and then for the team that then has to operate the mission, it's really just the start. So you immediately go into, all right, it's time to get to work. So you have that moment, you celebrate, you feel the impact of it,

and then you know that you have hopefully a decade or more in front of you. So you get to work and you start operating the rover. Why only a decade? Is it run out of energy at a certain point? Eventually, at some point it will. Can't you send more batteries? I think this is legitimate. They're giggling, but I think, yeah, you send more batteries, double A's, triple A's, you fire them. Isn't there a way to rejuvenate a rover? Not just, I mean, this little guy gave his all and then we just leave it when it runs out of energy. I don't think that's the way to go. We can do better, JPL, and we will. I love seeing those early bids for presidency from people in showbiz, and I think this is going to be an interesting four years.

I'm going to die on this prize. All right, Kevin, Europa. Let's get... Can we talk about Europa Clipper first? Because that's here, and as we speak, that spacecraft is being readied for long. Exactly, and it is. So Katie and I are scientists.

The major brain trust here at JPL are the brilliant engineers that actually turn the wrenches and build these spacecraft. And the Europa Clipper spacecraft, which will be launched in 2024 and will arrive out at Europa in the Jovian system in about 2030 or so. It's being built now, and it is going to completely revolutionize our understanding of this ice-covered ocean world. It's got cameras and spectrometers

and ice-penetrating radar and various mass spectrometers to taste the sputtered surface of Europa, to sample any plumes that might be erupting out from the ocean below. And so many of us have been working for so long with such great hopes and aspirations to see this come to fruition. And the fact that it's only two years away from the launch pad is tremendously exciting. Now,

unlike Mars, where you've got a six to eight month transit and that's kind of instant gratification from the solar system exploration standpoint with Europa we've got to wait about five to seven years to to get out there and actually start to to see things and the plumes that that's important isn't it because I know we saw plumes on Enceladus for example Cassini saw them but not instrumented to investigate them in any way. So we're talking about plumes rising up potentially that have been in contact with the ocean or they're coming from the surface? Yeah, so at Enceladus, we have relatively good confidence that the plumes connect to the ocean. And that's because the Cassini spacecraft, even though it wasn't designed to sample the plumes, it still had some mass spectrometers on it to figure out the chemistry. And what it revealed is that along with the water jets, there's also salt in the plumes of Enceladus. And salt is a good indication of water-rock

interaction and a salty ocean. Now there's other lines of evidence, but the discovery of the salts in the plumes was a really big line of evidence. And how close to the surface does Europa Clipper have to fly to get to those plumes? Well, it's going to be flying about several tens of kilometers above the surface. And here again, just think about that. Conan's numbers of a few hundred thousand kilometers are a little bit on the low end. How close? Yeah, yeah. Order of magnitude here or there, you know.

But the engineers here at JPL and in NASA more broadly have managed to figure out how to thread the hardest needles in the solar system, whether it's the Cassini spacecraft going through the plumes of Enceladus or in the 2030s just skimming over the surface of Europa at about 30 to 50 kilometers. And to have the confidence that we're not going to crash into the surface and that we're actually going to fly through a potential plume takes a tremendous amount of skilled engineering. It's wonderful, isn't it? For me, this idea that there is worlds

out there, so many millions, I'll go for millions of kilometers away, that have oceans below the surface and frozen water ice surfaces, maybe plumes of water. I often, you know, I used to have issues and still occasionally do with anxiety and feeling overwhelmed by whatever pressures of everyday life. And I noticed a long time ago that if I saw these beautiful high definition photos of Mars, I was immediately calmed. And I don't know, there may be, I'm sure there's a term for that expression, but I loved that there are places that don't care about me, that have nothing to do with me, that make my problems seem very small. And that was something that was profound to me about this kind of exploration is I love hearing about these other worlds, this almost infinite number of, or maybe infinite number of places and how removed they are from us. It makes me feel a kind of hope that

I don't quite understand it, but do you know what I'm talking about? Oh, yeah. I mean, you look at these Martian landscapes and they are soothing. They're untouched, unexplored. And I think there's, I know what you mean. I identify that there's a peace when you look at these landscapes and you just think, wow, that's another world, but it's one that I can see, but it's not right here for us to mess up, honestly. Yeah, and it also makes our problems seem infinitesimally small sometimes. It just gives me some kind of hope. So I find that to be, just contemplating these things,

I find to be very relaxing and kind of exhilarating. It's kind of the overview effect, isn't it? Exactly, it's the overview effect. Which is, you know, for those at that incredible moment, whenever you talk to an astronaut who's, you know, been able to look back on their own planet, and I think there's another thing. Like, when I first saw those images of Mars,

I couldn't believe they were, because they were so clear. Yes. And I thought, before I retweet these or anything, I need to double-check before we go, you idiot, you thought that's Mars. Of course it's not. That's Sedona, Arizona. I've had the same thing, though, as a young man driving across

the country, and I'd get out of my car in the desert and look at a giant mesa, and I would think, this is incredible. This doesn't care about me. This lived long before or existed long before me. It'll exist long after me. I was asked to move along because I was naked. Burning man's that way, sir.

National park, yeah. But that's how I like to explore things. But I find it to be, it's a similar effect, but when you're seeing a world, a world that I'm never going to set foot on, I will come and go and this will be around. It's been around long, long before me. It'll be around long after me.

I find that refreshing somehow. It feels like a reset of some kind. Yeah, yeah. I think you're right. I found that during the lockdown, you know, up in my attic where I was told to go for the whole lockdown by my wife. And every night I would just look out at the stars for, you know, start off for 10 minutes,

then it gets longer and longer. And you're right, that sense of, we were talking about this the other day, those photons that have traveled such an enormous distance and nothing's got in their way, and then you meet them and you can question them. And I think there's, you know, an innate ability and beauty, you know, just fantastic.

I had a quick question for Kevin. What is the length of time if Clipper's on Europa and is sending, communicating with you back on Earth, what's the length of time for that message? It depends on the exact alignment of Earth and Jupiter, but let's call it roughly 40 minutes. I still find that absolutely incredible that it's 40 minutes. That's, I'm sure, a long time.

You know, I know this is incredibly, Europa is so far away, but it's amazing that that message can get to you in less than an hour. And think about it, coming back to what Katie was saying about sort of the personification of the spacecraft. If someday we do land on Europa, and that spacecraft has the intelligence to do autonomous sampling and to analyze what it's collecting, and it does find evidence of life on Europa, the first thing to know that life exists beyond Earth will be that robotic vehicle.

And it will then transmit that back to us. 40 minutes later we might actually know that information. Are you guys leaving messages when you go, leaving something or putting some kind of inscription on these rovers that says, by the way, here's who we are and it's written in at least three languages? It's in Hebrew in case they speak. Who knows what they'll speak, but you've got to cover at least three languages.

We do. We do add, we festoon the rover with various woman and information coded in about who we are in hopes that if Voyager ever makes it far enough to encounter an alien civilization that could understand, they could actually figure out who we were and how to get in contact with us. We don't leave that explicit instructions with the rovers, but. Does someone ever on your team lobby for something that's just not going to happen? Like they want to put a, you know, let a bernie sanders sticker and you're like

not the right not really no that's not going to happen are there people that want to put things in the rover that and you have to say no that's we can't do that you must have to vote on it there there are ideas uh for things that could go on the rover and they are sometimes rejected. Yeah. I like that sticker. I think the idea, make Andromeda great again. We asked our audience, what do you think is out there that human beings have not detected yet?

What have you got, Brian? I have a space whales for reference to See Doctor Who season three, episode two, or is it season five? I can't get that wrong. But I think it's Season 5. You'd get into more trouble over getting something wrong about Doctor Who than anything you would get wrong.

Well, Tyo, is it Season 5, Episode 2? Season 5, Episode 2. Just to be very specific. You should check out Star Trek, the original. A planet of tall, red-haired individuals resembling a famous podco... Well, thank you for putting that one in, Conan. That was not me. Here's one. A politician with a conscience.

Oh, come on. We've got a space programme with adequate funding. Public transit in Los Angeles. Oh, this one. A goth girlfriend who won't break my heart. Who is that? How recent was this? Oh, it's not you.

Okay. So thank you very much to our panel. Katie Stack Morgan, Kevin Hand and Conan O'Brien. panel Katie Stack Morgan, Kevin Hand and Conan O'Brien. So our audience at JPL, all people who work at JPL, fantastic. Right, well I would tell you what our show's going to be next week, but I think it's highly unlikely we'll get Brian out of here. You will find him somewhere loitering around, so the Infinite Monkey Cage will probably be replaced by Brian Cox, Space Fugitive,

a series where a crack NASA team tried to find exactly where Brian Cox has taken the rocket he's stolen later this afternoon. Do not allow him in any restricted areas. Thank you. Good night. APPLAUSE APPLAUSE MUSIC PLAYS Turned out nice again. Lauren Laverne here with news of a very successful

Desert Island Discs rescue. They'd been missing for decades. David Hockney. I went to the art school and they asked me if I had a private income. And I said I didn't know what that was. And they said, well, if you've not got one, you can't be an artist because you'll never make a living at it. Dame Margot Fonteyn. What I've always looked forward to most in my life would be an old age on a desert island just playing gramophone records all day long.

And Bing Crosby. Could you build a house? No way. A shelter? No way. I couldn't fix a safety pin. But they're all back in Radio 4's Desert Island Discs archive, thanks to the efforts of keen vintage tape collectors. To listen to them, along with Dudley Moore,

Sophie Tucker, Noel Coward and dozens of other castaways, just head to the Desert Island Discs website. This is the first radio ad you can smell. The new Cinnabon Pull Apart only at Wendy's. It's ooey, gooey and just five bucks for the small coffee all day long. Taxes extra at participating

Wendy's until May 5th. Terms and conditions apply. In our new podcast, Nature Answers, rural stories from a changing planet, we are traveling with you to Uganda and Ghana to meet the people on the front lines of climate change. We will share stories of how they are thriving using lessons learned from nature. And good news, it is working. Learn more by listening to Nature Answers wherever you get your podcasts. you