Dreams and my Date with Destiny

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up? Amongst us planetary scientists, the answer is almost always: "An Astronaut." I can certainly understand the appeal. Who wouldn't want to explore an alien place and do it in the style with which we associate Buck Rogers, Captain Kirk or any of our other intrepid science fiction heroes?

But that doesn't quite capture what I imagined at that age. Let me explain what I mean by that statement by using an example. When I was much, much younger, my parents allowed me to stay up for one show alone - NOVA on PBS. It was a real treat because the show came on at 9:30 PM in Newfoundland which is pretty late for an eight year old. For those of you who know the show, there's quite a variety of topics that end up getting covered from medicine to military technology and everything in between. 

However, I did have a favourite episode. I just couldn't get enough of the results that came back from the Voyager probes. That story had everything: cutting edge tech, an audacious plan with dramatic twists and turns, and wonders revealed that felt so much more satisfying than anything from SciFi because they were actually real. Central to the whole process was the mission controller and that holy of holies for me, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Yes, I was one of those eight year olds who dreamed of one day being part of JPL.

Lessons Learned

August is the 8th anniversary of my enrollment at the University of Arizona's Planetary Science program. As such, I figured this might be a good time to present some advice for the incoming class of '16 (typical PTYS PhD programs take ~5 years). As always, this is specific to my own experience in my own field and things change rapidly in academia. Your mileage may vary.

Hope and a Call to Action: Planetary Decadal Survey Released

Steve Squyres (left) and Jim Green (right) answer questions Monday Night at LPSC following the unveiling of the Planetary Decadal survey. Image is a screen capture from the live feed recap (I attended in person).

I can remember when I first met Steve Squyres. It was way back in May of 2004 when I was unbelievably green and doing a two week internship on MER at the behest of my advisor, Peter Smith. I was in the microscopic imager room in Pasadena with Nicole Spanovich (now at JPL) and he stuck his head in to see what was happening. Nicole introduced us and I remember him saying hello to me. I don't remember what I said in return, but I do recall that before I could think of something clever to say, he was off again to the next instrument room.

Fog on Mars

One of the things about Martian Surface Missions that appeals so much to me is how no other place in the solar system is so distant, yet so familiar and comprehensible on a human scale. Other places make your imagination run wild. Underneath the ice of Europa? Skimming the rings of Saturn? Standing on distant Pluto? They make for great art, and we can picture the locations, but their appeal is mostly intellectual, not guttural. But what about Mars? Exotic? Yes. But still it remains within the realm of places that feel familiar, where we could picture ourselves sitting and watching a sunset in person:

The sun setting over the columbia hills in Gusev Crater, Mars. If the sunset weren't blue, we could easily mistake this scene for one shot on Earth, say in Morocco or the Gobi Desert, or perhaps even the badlands of Alberta.

Last entry from 2010's DPS Notebook

Well, as those of you who read this space may know, I've been promising one last post on my experiences at this year's DPS ever since the event ended way back in October. It's not that I haven't written one, on the contrary, I composed a capping piece on the red-eye back to Toronto. No, the question has been whether or not I'm comfortable with publicly posting my musings on that flight.

Knowing how much to share is a tough line to walk. On the one hand, you could take the "Dragnet" route and stick entirely to your stated subject: "Just the facts, ma'am." While they make useful references, such blogs are somewhat dry. They also ignore the fact that all of us who do science for a living are real people with hopes, dreams, desires and foibles. But you can't put so much of that on the webpage that you drown out the subject matter. So it's tough to balance the two.

What puts me over the top on this one (after much reflection) is that it does, honestly, express how I was feeling as the conference drew to a close. It was a happy time, and we all know how fleeting those can be. As such, I'd like to be able to look back, years from now and remember how it was that I felt. As such, I'm presenting this as a bit of a year-end piece:

A Night at the RASC

UPDATE: PDF of the Talk Slides are available here!

Last night I had the opportunity to give a guest lecture at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Annual General Meeting in Toronto at the Ontario Science Centre. For 45 minutes (and then some with questions!), we talked about the exploration of our solar system by robotic spacecraft over the last 50 years. In my talk I made some comparisons to the earlier era of maritime discovery which lasted from the mid 1400s up until the early 1700s. Later, in lieu of the upcoming Planetary Decadal Survey, to be released in March of 2011, I discussed some of the big questions that we're on the verge of answering and what exploration by spacecraft might look like in the next 50 years.

Sagan's Lesson: Learning from the EPO Masters at the DPS

The Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, as photographed by Matthew Field in 2007 (http://www.photography.mattfield.com). A mecca for astronomers and planetary scientists old and young alike, this place embodies the contact between science and the public.

Not every presentation at the DPS is on planetary science, there is also a limited subset of posters, talks and booths which deal with education and public outreach. While this component is much less developed than it is at LPSC, which has featured an EPO session, it is present nevertheless in the exhibit hall. Some of these are education of the scientists themselves, for instance, there was a poster on the PDS, the planetary data system, which a scientist who happened to be attending and who had never used spacecraft data before would have found very informative. Others announced
new journals, such as Springer's “Planetary Science” which, no doubt intends to try and give the Division's own journal, Icarus, a run for its money. Still others advertised services and products of use to the planetary community.

But there was also material presented on how we can better go about educating our students and getting our message out to the broader public. The fact that these presentations are here at all are a testament to a famous planetary scientist named Carl Sagan who believed strongly that as scientists and recipients of public funding that it was imperative that we share our knowledge, our experience and our enthusiasm with the broader community. In his honour, the DPS each year awards the Sagan Medal to the active planetary scientist who has done the most over their lifetime to
advancing planetary science amongst the public. This year's recipient was Carolyn Porco, Voyager mission veteran and Principal Investigator for Cassini's ISS (Imaging Science Subsystem), now located at SSI (Space Science Institute) in Boulder, Colorado.

Carolyn was a friend of Carl's, and the award was originally planned to be given to her by his wife, Ann Druyan. Sadly, Ann was not able to attend, but a touching letter was read in her absence. Carolyn then took the stage in the bright lights of a camera crew, and delivered a brilliant speech. This in some respects is a testament to today's most famous scientists: they are also masters of media and minor stars in their own rights. For instance, in addition to her appearances in documentaries about Cassini, Science and Space Exploration, Carolyn was also a science advisor on
movies, including “Contact” and contributed to the portrayal of Titan in “Star Trek.”

These are all interesting interfaces where education, media and planetary science touch. But EPO is also reasonably big business. Your typical NASA Spacecraft contract since the early 2000s requires that 1% of money be spent on EPO. For a mission like Phoenix, that works out to several million dollars, and we were lucky enough to have funding for a separate media/public affairs officer (Doug Lombardi then Sara Hammond) and an education/outreach director (Carla Bitter). We had a full size mock-up
built, many very professional presentations were given, a publicity trip to Alaska for educators was held and so forth. With so much money at stake, this is an area at which we need to excel.

Beyond this component were some activities which were not, on the surface, meant to be educational but from which I learned some immediately applicable lessons. There were trips to two world famous locations. The first was the Griffith Observatory, which despite the name was never a research observatory, but instead was directly intended by its founder, Griffith J. Griffith as a place where the public could come and learn about astronomy and get the chance to use the smaller telescopes. While
the urban sprawl of Los Angeles has severely restricted what is observable from Griffith, its educational aspect is top notch. I was lucky enough to attend two planetarium shows and take a look through one of their Schmidt-Cassegrains at the Wild Duck Cluster. I was particularly impressed by their use of live presenters. While they didn't demand audience participation (in fact it was more of a performance) they were seamlessly able to show us how the stars looked at different places on the Earth by using Norse Mythology and "The Lord of the Rings" to grab the audience.

I also must admit that I'm a bit of a sucker for Art-Deco architecture, so how could I resist? A colleague who accompanied me to the observatory described my reaction as "a kid in a candy store."

Next was the final activity of the conference for me, a visit to the largest telescope in the world from 1948-1975 and in North America through 1998 (an interesting piece of trivia, at 6m the LZT is the largest telescope on Canadian soil and the largest liquid-mirror telescope in the world). Mount Palomar is easily worth the trip to the mountains inland of San Diego. The structure is amazing; a 200" (5m) mirror is cradled within a 500-ton RA/Dec rig and balanced on a gigantic horseshoe. Heck, the secondary mirror is 42" wide! They were even kind enough to move the dome around for us, with my group poised on the edge! Since I help to give tours at the York Observatory, it was useful to pick up a few tricks of the trade from the docents who have been working at this amazing piece of technology for decades.

An interesting note: both Griffith and Palomar are steeped in history and chance. Griffith almost didn't happen as the City of Los Angeles originally did not wish to accept the gift of such a distant site (at the time LA was a small town of 100,000 residents, now you might describe Griffith as almost being downtown). At Palomar, the epic pouring of the mirror (it took months to cool) at Corning in New York in 1936 had to wait for the end of WWII for installation. Originally, the operator occupied a cage near the prime focus, high above the floor, where glass slides would be installed. Of course, some folks decided to put their own heads at prime focus and one described it as the most religious moment of his life. Fascinating stuff!

The end of lifetime tenure on spacecraft missions

Michael Carroll's concept of the Europa-Jupiter System Mission which proposes to implement a partially revolving science team.

One of my mentors and a friend at the University of Arizona is a professor named Bob Brown. In his earlier days, Bob worked with Voyager and was best known as the originator of a concept known as the solid state greenhouse effect. This concept would later be applied to Neptune's moon Triton and indirectly to the sublimation spiders on Mars. In 1989, as voyager was winding down, Bob was selected as an instrument Principal Investigator for the VIMS (Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer) instrument on Cassini and has worked on that mission ever since. Currently, Cassini is funded through 2017 which will bring Bob close to retirement. Now Bob has also worked on other projects, but Voyager and Cassini have dominated his professional life.

It was originally intended for Cassini to have what we in the Mars program know of as a Participating Scientist program. Basically, this is a program whereby younger scientists who were perhaps not well-known enough to make it onto the main science team through the black art of mission team selection, could join the mission later on, after launch. But unfortunately the participating scientist program never happened. In this respect Cassini is far from unique. Phoenix also was forced to cancel its participating scientist program for monetary reasons.

Still, there is a big difference in giving lifetime tenure to science team members when a mission is expected to last 90 sols or even 152 sols, as Phoenix did, and giving lifetime tenure to science team members on a mission which could last 10, 20 or 30 years. This is something that NASA headquarters has realized, and to their credit, once it became clear that the MER rovers were going to far outlive their expected 90-sol missions, they held a participating scientist selection program that allowed new blood onto the mission, and helped the careers of many young scientists.

Now NASA hopes to apply this model to a future flagship mission. Today, Curt Neibur, project scientist for the EJSM (Europa-Jupiter System Mission) project announced a science team concept for the mission which is nothing short of revolutionary. While instrument P.I.'s and their Co-I's would maintain science team status throughout selection and all phases of the mission (projected to last from early 2011 through 2029), much of the science team would be hired on 3-5 year contracts as investigation scientists. These people would roll-on and roll-off the mission providing their expertise for a limmited time only.

This approach makes a great deal of sense. For instance, currently the project scientist needs to try to anticipate all the different expertise which will be required, and hire everyone at the start. As a result, some science team members do relatively little until after launch when their expertise is required. Other unanticipated needs may end up unfilled by a full science-team member. By having the option to change the make-up of the team over time, it becomes possible to use your resources more efficiently. You have the flexibility to hire those science team members who can be most useful in any particular phase at the time when their expertise is most needed, and not have to carry them through the entire project.

Additionally, this gives a way of getting more people involved with the mission, especially younger career people, who might have had great difficulty in breaking into a mission previously. By cycling through these science team members, perhaps as many as 6 generations worth with a mission like EJSM, you can expand the base of those who have intimate knowledge of the data sets to be gathered. That means better science return, as more people in the science community at large will have direct knowledge of how to process and interpret the recieved data. This contrasts markedly from the current situation where many of the researchers operating out of the PDS have had no direct contact with the team, instruments or spacecraft which gathered the data that they are interpreting.

The rub here is how to reward these rolled-off science team members in order to make the program attractive to them. Many questioners were concerned that in the early years, investigation scientist positions would be undesirable. Those who would be selected would be giving up significant time to get hardware ready for flight; time which might be better spent publishing or advancing their careers. Furthermore, given the large number of scientists who would cycle through, the cachet to working on the mission in that capacity would be reduced. As Curt has said before, operations experience on a NASA mission which has ended may be edifying, but a potential academic employer will not regard it as a plus. More potentially problematic is determining which investigation scientists get inside the data embargo once the science phase of the mission begins.

Therein lies an interesting potential consequence of this change. Once a large part of the community begins cycling through a mission during its lifetime, it may become more difficult to justify a 6 to 12-month embargo. As I've commented before, this embargo is one of the main motivators of researchers who work on missions. It allows you justify the calculus of giving up your time in the short term for long-term gains in a professional context. Without that embargo, mission participation may become less attractive to those looking to aggressively advance their careers.

These are complex problems without simple answers, we're just going to have to try a few things and see what ends up working. But one thing is clear, if a major mission, such as EJSM finds that lifetime tenure for science team members is not justifiable, then this is likely a practice that is on its way out. So, while it may not be possible for future researchers to follow the kind of path that Bob has had the opportunity to take, the process of spacecraft mission participation could be opened up to much wider segment of the community. I think that's something to be very pleased with.

Overshare

The term oversharing refers to someone who lets loose into the public sphere something that would be best left elsewhere. It doesn't necessarily mean information that isn't already public, as oversharing can be the result of taking something that is already public knowledge, but isn't really noticed by most people, and shining the light of public opinion on it. Examples of the first kind are common - for instance the person who puts their social security number up on facebook. Often this sort of thing happens by accident, or out of naivete. But in the latter case, that of attracting undue or undesired attention, is something much more grey as it's the kind of thing that is often done for laudable purposes. For instance, often folks like me will speak out about things that are common place in our own professions. In particular we like to highlight things that make us passionate about our work, stuff that's cool, or anything that gives the broader insight on what it means to be one of us. Done right, we call it E/PO which stands for Education and Public Outreach, and it's an invaluable asset in the sciences where much of our funding comes from government and demands public support. Despite this, there can sometimes be "oversharing" in which material may be posted which can be taken out of context.

A recent example of this kind of EPO gone awry was posted by the good folks over at the Online Engineer Blog (www.theonlinenegineer.org/theoleblog/) in the form of a youtube video entitled "Stairway to Heaven." The video showed a couple of electrical technicians (linesmen?) climbing up a 1768 foot guyed tower and antenna to effectuate work on the upper surfaces. Like all structural engineering (at least to me, a former engineer!), guyed masts like these are very neat. They can soar to incredible heights, even reaching above 600m to send out radio signals over thousands of square miles. We don't often get to see them from the perspective of the top and many of us have wondered exactly how you would go about fixing one, should it break. Thus, the video by showing technicians ascending to the top gives us a vicarious glimpse into their work and something they no doubt find to be a very cool part of the job.

Taken solely in this way, the video is a masterstroke piece of EPO. Heck, it even went viral on youtube! If only my martian wind or telltale animations had those kind of page-views! However, one issue with these sorts of things is that people often evaluate them out of context using what they know of their ordinary lives. And success always brings things out of the woodwork. In this case, the downfall of the video was showing the technicians free-climbing. Not something that I would want to do, but something that they are trained to do and something that helps them to do their job. The video even helpfully points out that this type of work is entirely legal and is permitted by regulations that have always been available for download from OSHA. But it didn't matter. People complained that there was no way this was legal. Two TV stations, sensing controversy and a story, asked to run the video. Finally, after much controversy, the video was ultimately withdrawn by the author.

In some ways this is a bit like the unexpected hubub surrounding the "demotion" of Pluto by the IAU back in the earlier part of this decade. To this day, we still get questions about that one at the observatory. I've often been told that the pluto controversy was a good thing for astronomy and planetary science - it provided a teachable moment which gave us all an in which we could use to engage the public. Still there are those who interpret it only as an affront. Why else would Pluto still be a planet when "within the skies of New Mexico and Illinois" by legislative fiat?

Both cases are a result of what is largely an internal point of interest leaking out into the public sphere in ways that were, perhaps, a bit counter-productive. What makes the "stairway to heaven" video different is that, unlike with Pluto (with apologies to Alan Stern and the New Horizons mission), there is serious money involved with the building and maintenance of radio towers. i don't know if the technician who shot the video had the permission of his employer or the operator of the tower to release the video. Probably no one would have cared, (heck, I bet the employer and owner would have enjoyed the exposure!) had it remained a simple point of interest amongst a group of technofiles like myself.

But when it first got popular and then got controversial the forces that be aligned against it. While the site of the tower is not explicitly given, a quick 15-minute google search reveals its location (I won't be more precise then to say that it's in Texas) and the owner. And from there it would be a short trip to the identity of the climber for those involved. That climber wants to keep working. The owner doesn't want a surprise OSHA inspection which a public outcry would demand, despite a lack of wrongdoing. And absolutely no one wants a crusade for an unnecessary change in legislation and working conditions. So there was no way the video could stay up, to the chagrin of many of us who want to experience the understanding (and vicarious thrill!) of watching a well-trained engineer at work.

As for planetary science and myself, this issue goes way beyond "Pluto" and other teachable moments. The mere fact that I write this blog openly (way to infrequently, I know, loyal reader!) is somewhat of a risk. Having no public opinions is always the safer path, but eventually all successful scientists, by virtue of the constituency we serve, need a public presence. While I try to keep things as positive as possible, there is the chance that I will insult or slight others in my industry with my words here. For that I apologize in advance. But I feel the risk is a justified one. I feel fortunate to do what I do for a living and I want to get the word out, good and bad. That's why I help out on public viewing nights at the York Observatory. That's why I write these words here. And maybe, just maybe, someday some future employer will read what I write here to get some measure of this man and something about what I've had to say will tip the scales in my favour in a close race. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The next step

So, I can now officially announce that I have accepted a new job starting at the end of my current 12-month contract with York University. It's an NSERC Fellowship, under the Canadian Astrobiology Training Program and I'll be working at the University of Western Ontario with Dr. Gordon "Oz" Osinski. Oz and I knew each other, briefly, when I was a PhD student at Arizona and he was there working as a postdoc under Jay Melosh (now at Purdue). It's a 2-year fellowship and I'm really looking forward to starting! But before that happens, there is still much work to be done here at York. Hopefully that will include some publications and perhaps even a first conference since I started this blog, 13 months ago.

This fellowship caps off a successful couple of months for me, as I also recently took home a prize from the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society (CMOS) for my publication "Atmospheric Dynamics at the Phoenix Landing site, as seen by the Surface Stereo Imager."



I've never won anything like this before and it was a happy moment. A long-time friend and colleague on the Phoenix Mission told me that my smile said it all. (The complete list of winners at that banquet can be found here ).
The award I received is named after Roger Daly. It's an interesting coincidence that the biography highlights some of his early work in Newfoundland and Labrador, my home province. But beyond that, his is an interesting story and a testament to the twisting, turning path that led many of his era into careers in Science. I have to wonder whether this kind of a career path would be possible today.

So while the near future looks bright, I also have to begin looking past this upcoming fellowship. And there lie dragons...

_____

As a footnote, a great little website operated by musician John Boswell (www.symphonyofscience.com) has just recently put out a piece on my favourite planet, Mars which samples heavily from Robert Zubrin. While Zubrin has been criticized in the past, he is a tireless advocate for a rapid, near-term crewed mission to Mars. Two of his books, "The Case for Mars" and very especially "Entering Space" were significant influences on me as I first entered this field as an Aerospace Engineer and later as a Planetary Scientist.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

After last night's closing ceremonies, all I can say is wow. What a finish and what a show. Kudos especially to our Canadian athletes who really finished strongly in the last couple of days with a record haul of medals. You had us worried there for a while! All congradulations aside, however, what I'd like to talk about here in this space today are some of the similarities and parallels between an endeavour like the olympic games and space flight.

Some of these are obvious. When you ask a kid what they'd like to be wheb they grow up, chances are that athlete and astronaut would both appear high on the list of most popular aspirations. As well, they both create great spectacle and highlight incredible human stories. No matter which one you are talking about, a veritable army of dedicated people, toiling for years, are necessary to pull the whole thing off.

Also, like the olympics, spaceflight will yield the highest returns if it is not the sole province of a single nation, or even a small few. It needs to be a truly international experience. Greater and greater collaboration across borders is occurring, but the flag on your passport still matters enormously. This is perhaps one of the greatest promises of commercial spaceflight, which may eventually open up this frontier to people from all nations.

So, could there be an echo to Jacques Rogge's traditional line from last night "I call upon the youth of the world to gather in four years..." for our endeavour?

While you ponder that, think about this: on a deeper level, both the Olympics and Spaceflight are expressions of our civic pride and are funded largely through the public purse. As such, both are run at what is essentially a loss. Today VANOC will reveal its balance sheet, and it's not expected to be good. The City of Vancouver has certainly paid a price for the honour of hosting the games. Many residents fought against the bid and boycotted the celebrations that took place. Likewise, the expenditure on NASA sometimes stirs a similar response. Kritoph Klover perhaps put it best in his song "Others Standing by" from the album "To Touch the Stars:"

'Why would you go there?' they say
'There's nothing up there anyways
We could use the money here
Don't you know that life's to dear?'

Neither hosting the winter games nor exploring are cheap endeavours. The obvious monetary returns in terms of new technologies (memory foam, anyone?) and sporting facilities can be hard to quantify exactly, and never cover the cost. So why do we bother with either?

I think it comes down to our nature as human beings. We all aspire to be more then we are. Life is not just the search for a just and comfortable existence. We need to believe in our ability, as a species to grow beyond what we are. To test the limits of what we can do. It's a big part of what made us the creatures we are today, and it is also key to our long term survival. That's worth a few dollars every four years. So, as the olympic motto says: Faster, Higher, Stronger! Or as Klover answers:

'We'll send the best from Earth
To find out what it's worth.'