Come and Learn the Art of Exploration

The author takes a selfie with the Curiosity Rover at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one building over from Curiosity's Mission Control where he worked during the summer of 2012. We hope to give those who attend our event on May 27, 2017 a taste of what running a space mission like Curiosity is really like.

Last year I was fortunate to be successful in my bid to secure an Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Career Researcher Award. In addition to allowing me to expand the Curiosity (Mars Science Laboratory)-related work that we do in my group, this particular award has a youth outreach component that we're about to roll out for the first time. I think we've put together a really interesting day if you want to get an idea of what it's like to do real planetary exploration. I know that my team and I are really looking forward to sharing our enthusiasm with those students who join us on Saturday, May 27!

Some of you may have navigated to this post in order to get more information on the event, so this will serve as exposition. Over the course of six hours, from 9:30 AM to 3:30 PM, we hope to give you all a little taste of what science-driven mission design is like. The "science-driven" component is important because, where space exploration was at one point focused purely on pushing boundaries (what we call "footprints and flags"), the modern version has an animating purpose in mind, and that purpose is the science that is returned. Think of it as the difference between John Cabot's "Matthew" and Charles Darwin's "Beagle." We will start with how you select a landing site before describing how you go about equipping a robot for the journey and then how that robot is operated on another planet to actually accomplish science goals. In each case, it will be you and your fellow students who make the choices.

The Summer of Public Speaking

.@ArcticSaxifrage starts off the morning talking about the importance of studying our own solar system @Starfest2016 pic.twitter.com/CKs6zen7KC

— York Observatory (@yorkobservatory) August 6, 2016

I won't deny it, I enjoy giving public talks about my science. Not only is it fun, but it also serves the cause of informing the public about exactly what it is that we do in planetary science and exploration and gives my research funders a good return on their investment. What more could a public servant such as myself want? I try to accomodate all the talks that are requested of me, but the summer is always easier to schedule than are other times of the year, so often you'll stand a better chance of hearing me when the weather is warm.

A big day for Planetary

 The last approach image taken by New Horizons before closest approach. As the planetary community waits with bated breath for tonight's downlink, we consider this sparkling new image - the best view yet of the furthest object from our sun yet observed by spacecraft. Pluto, a world in its own right, no matter what label we put on it.

Like many of my colleagues, I got up early this morning to witness an event billed as the "completion of our initial reconnaissance of the solar system." Just before 8 in the morning, Eastern Daylight Time, the New Horizons spacecraft - our very first New Frontiers mission - made its closest approach to the (now) Dwarf Planet Pluto.

From an outsider's perspective, I can imagine that one of the most puzzling aspects of this event was the very non-event of it. Sure there were scads of folks with tiny American flags counting down and cheering at the Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, MD. The NASA brass was there too - Charlie Bolton, the Administrator himself, was giving interviews along with the other principals and there was a media circus of lights and cameras.

But really, the action was rather remote. There was no confirmation of success via satellite, no breathtaking images poping up on the screen. Despite the atmosphere feeling much more like a spacecraft landing than a pure flyby, it stands in stark contrast to the three landing events in which I have participated, even Huygens landing on Saturn's moon Titan.

And how could it not? Pluto, out beyond the orbit of Neptune is over 4.5 hours away by radio wave, and, no doubt, the team doesn't wish to waste precious minutes near close encounter slewing the spacecraft away from its prize to transmit what they have seen so far back to earth. Even if they did it would be after noon when they arrived. Later still as, certainly, after all this time, New Horizons will have sufficient discipline programmed in to collect togther the best of the best before sending back home for us tonight.

Thus the true celebration will take place later today in a worldwide event called Plutopalooza. I will be participating in the York University Astronomy Club's edition. This morning's event was instead more about having a picture of cheering scientists to go with the morning press, and also a meetup for the true believers. Perish the thought, but we don't yet know how things went. While there is joy, and perhaps a bit of relief that the time of encounter has finally arrived - I can tell you from experience that it is tinged with a hint of sick anticipation still. That won't be dispelled until tonight.

But as we wait for word from the spacecraft, we have a beautiful new picture to wonder at. Anticipating the need to fill that data vacuum, the team held back their best approach image which I have reproduced at the top of this post. It shows the feature now famous around the world as "the Heart" and a surprising range of coloration across the surface. It is almost as if the dwarf planet is streaked with paint. But the coloring agent here are different volatiles - likely some nitrogen, methane, ammonia and other trace compounds.

Unfortunately for a planetary scientist like myself, we already know that the atmosphere will be thin. Pluto is several decades beyond perihelion now and is headed out towards the far part of its orbit. But what remains on the surface was likely forged, at least in part, during those 'warmer and wetter times.' In fact, the red coloration led to Bolden describing Pluto as "the other red planet."

But all references to Mars aside, Pluto is indeed its own world with its own fascinating geology. The image above doesn't give the whole picture, but it is clear enough for us to know that the close encounter images will reveal many different processes operating on the body and competing with each other to leave their mark on its surface.

We had a hint of this. Neptue's moon Triton (pictured below) is thought to be a captured Kuiper Belt Object, and was far more active and more varied than had been suspected from previous telescopic observation. Here there were frostier areas littered across its vaguely reddish surface and the enigmatic cantaloupe terrain (at upper left) which might be tectonic. Dark streaks cut across the surface of the body, the remnants of nitrogen geysers erupting out into space driven by a solid state greenhouse effect. Could this perhaps be the source of the darker "Whale" terrain to the left of Pluto's "Heart?" Both bodies have a bit of a mottled or scalloped appearance, especially in the interfaces between different terrain types. This is also seen in other sublimation driven landscapes, such as on Comets and the "Swiss-cheese" terrain of the Martian southern polar cap.

Not surprisingly, there are also differences between Pluto and Triton. While they share a similar coloration, likely as the result of similar processing and similar composition, in other ways they are unalike. The bluish-greenish frostiness near the terminator on Triton does not have a clear analog, at least not in images captured thus far. For its part, Pluto also has significantly more dark terrain on its surface and more crater-like features. For much more than that, we will have to await this evening.

New Horizons is the first of the New Frontiers Missions (Juno is NF2 and Osiris-Rex is NF3). Meant to be more responsive than a Flagship, yet better funded and more complex than a Discovery-Class mission, it's impressive what we've seen so far and I can't wait to see what's yet to come from this new class of exploration mission.

Oh, and for those of you just coming upon the field - not to worry about that "completing the reconnaissance of the solar system" remark, there will be plenty of exploring left to do. Mariner 4, the first fly-by of Mars, revealed only a moon-like cratered highland. This is certainly not how we think of that planet today. Mariner 10 saw less than half of Mercury's surface - a map that was not completed until 30 years later by Messenger.

Even after New Horizons, a good chunk of Pluto remains in darkness. While we're unlikely to be back within the next few decades, perhaps even within my lifetime, who knows what mysteries might be lurking there? That's the thrill of planetary, and it's days like today where we finally fill in the map a little bit more which makes this area of such great interest to me.

Onwards and Outwards

 

Above: Steven Oleson's concept of a Titan submersible combines two of my favorite ideas for future space exploration in our solar system. Below, the polar layered terrain of Mars as revealed by HiRise is a record of past climate just waiting to be read. The story it tells has significance not just for Mars, but perhaps for the Earth as well.

Spurred on by Slate.com reporter Matthew Francis, I have recently got to thinking about where in the solar system I would most like to send a space mission if budget were no object. My comments with Matthew made it into an article in Slate which was also picked up by the National Post here in Canada. But there's only so much you can say in a newspaper or magazine article. 

Instead, exploring this topic this seems like excellent material for this space, and you can find my own personal top four below the cut. By the way, I can't forget adding a thank-you to JPL Engineer Keri Bean, currently working with the Dawn mission (though she has shown an affinity for Mars in the past), who recommended me to Matthew in the first place!

How to make your own Petrographic Microscope

 

Note the colourful chondrules as viewed under cross-polarized light. Such views are used for mineral identification and demonstrate the interaction of light with real-world samples. You too can make your own petrographic microscope! Here's how...

Here at York, as we welcome our newest class of students, we're taking a few minutes to pause and start thinking more about our recruitment efforts in the future. One question that comes up often is how we can stand out in a sea of power point presentations. The solution - to try to be a little more hands-on by bringing in some props to illustrate some of the principles behind our work. To that end,  some of us have come up with little inexpensive demonstrations that capture a lot of what we do here in the Earth and Space Science and Engineering Department. Look for these at university nights at high schools everywhere in the coming months!

For my part, I put together a little, inexpensive rig that gives students a taste of a few different themes. Basically, you could call it the poor man's petrographic microscope. It presents a neat little introduction to some interesting optics with serious engineering applications as well as some earth science. By using meteorite thin sections as my specimen, I can springboard into planetary science and spacecraft and how we can use simple techniques to learn a great deal from the materials we encounter in our exploration.

A Surreal Summer

 A photo I took of myself last summer in Pasadena, CA while working on the Mars Science Laboratory Mission which appears on the cover of today's St. John's Telegram. Can you tell that I'd been doing Mars Time for a whole month by that point? In some ways, this summer has been almost as surreal as last summer.

It has been a long slog of a summer, but today there's a fallish tinge in the air here in Toronto and I can feel the semester beginning to creep up on me once again. One thing I never really grasped about this job when I took it was how many different components there are to being a prof.  I will admit that I was certainly aware of each of those things but not of how much time they can eat up, collectively.

Dare Mighty Things, Canada

Canada was the 3rd country to build a satellite, Alouette, shown above (Photo courtesy CRC). From the very start, ours was an international effort, but one that has been fraught with many ups and downs as my recent reading of "Canada's Fifty Years in Space" (written by the resident of the neighboring office to mine at York, Gordon Shepherd) has revealed. On this anniversary, I can't help but wonder, what might the future hold?

2012 was a significant year for space exploration. Not only was this past year the 50^th anniversary of the launch of Canada’s first satellite, Alouette, but it was also the 50^th anniversary of the start of planetary exploration with Mariner 2’s voyage to Venus.

Our exploration of the planets continues to this day. Just this past August, as millions around the world watched, the Mars Science Laboratory Rover Curiosity achieved a daring landing on the dusty soils of Gale Crater in equatorial Mars. Over the next two years, the largest and most capable planetary rover ever developed will climb the five-kilometer high Mount Sharp and will search for the tantalizing clues to why a place that was once very much like the early Earth diverged to become a frozen desert. It will also help to determine if those early conditions might have led to life on our neighboring world.

I was fortunate to be at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena on the night of the landing. As I cheered them on from mission control, the team that successfully met the challenge of delivering Curiosity to Mars celebrated. A product of eight long hard years of work, the landing was a great triumph for the United States as a Nation and a message to the world that their country can still accomplish inspiring things.

In a small way it was a triumph for Canada as well. For a relatively meager investment of $17.5 million, Canada was able to provide Curiosity with an indispensable tool – the alpha particle x-ray spectrometer that will determine the proportions of different elements in the Martian soil. In turn, a team of Canadian scientists was welcomed into the fold.

Some might say that this is another example of Canada “punching above our weight” on the international stage. After all, Canadians make up over 5% of the team that will decide what the rover will do each day, despite having contributed less than 1% to its costs.

However, such a statement ignores the fact that, compared to the United States and even ailing Europe, our Space Program is relatively undersized both in absolute terms and proportional to our population. Despite drastically reducing its commitment in the years since Apollo, the US still spends nearly $60 per citizen per year in space, Canada under $7.

The present situation contrasts strongly with our history. Canada, the third nation to build and place a satellite in orbit, was an early achiever. From the Canadarm to RadarSat to the CCDs that captured Curiosity’s first glimpse of the Martian surface our expertise remains world class.

Furthermore, as a nation spread across a vast expanse we stand to benefit more than most from investments in space. Orbiting spacecraft are the only effective way that we can communicate across the distances that separate us, seek out the natural resource wealth lying undiscovered beneath our territory and monitor the health of our atmosphere, oceans, forests and cities in trust for future generations.

The innovations that improve our daily lives and our ability to accomplish these goals come from technologies that push the limits of what is possible. It is not a stretch to say that the techniques being pioneered today on Mars, where the conditions and challenges are more severe, will lead to tomorrow’s advances. If we do not, as a nation, choose to do these things, those spoils will not be ours.

Fortunately, robotic exploration is economical. We could actually lead! Had Canada been responsible for all aspects of building and launching Curiosity it would have cost us just a tenth of one cent for every tax dollar spent in Canada. Projects like this would give us a robust exploration program that would enhance our expertise at home and enable our space industry to become more competitive abroad while making us stronger partners in international projects.

But beyond our ability to calculate monetary costs and benefits, planetary exploration is an inspirational exercise. Today, these robots are the true explorers, their cameras give us a human perspective on worlds that until recently were nothing more than points of light in the sky. Such images are the reason why many of us choose Engineering and the Sciences as a career. Couldn’t we all take pride if spacecraft made right here at home were opening up new vistas of their own?

At the press conference that followed the touchdown, Charles Elachi, Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory cited the Olympics. He said that he felt his team had won the Gold medal with their picture-perfect landing. Like the Olympics, some cite Space Exploration as a dream not worth the cost. It is also said that, as Canadians, we pride ourselves on being a pragmatic people. But are Peace, Order and Good Government all there is to us? For my part, on the eve of our next 50 years in space, I feel Canada also can dare mighty things. 

__________

Originally, I had intended to submit this as a Newspaper Op-Ed, but in the end decided that this was the better venue. I'd also like to thank a former professor of mine and a current colleague on MSL, Dr. Laurie Leshin, for help with editing. 

A Small Insight from the 2012 Canadian Space Summit

The team from Concordia shows off their award-winning university-built 3-U cube sat. We heard from this group and many others at the 2012 CSS about the possibilities for exploring our planet and our solar system with small spacecraft not unlike the one pictured above.

A few weeks ago I was participating in the 2012 Canadian Space Summit in London, Ontario (full disclosure: I am on the conference organizing committee). We had a great week full of interesting talks. The highlight speakers were my PhD Advisor, Peter Smith who spoke at the banquet and the last man (and only geologist) to walk on the moon, Harrison Schmitt - the subject of a great deal of media and the host of a separate ticketed lecture.

But one emerging theme is a problem that is particularly acute for Canada - how do we fund space exploration? Even countries with large coffers dedicated to space, like the United States, or Inter-Governmental organizations such as ESA, often run into difficulties with getting their projects funded. As a result, you might be tempted to think that the only way a smaller country like Canada can get their flag into space is by partnering with others and contributing a small piece of a bigger mission.

While this has been a winning strategy, so far, I don't think we need to limit our ambitions here. And neither did a number of presenters at the CSS. We heard several talks on an emerging field: planetary nano-spacecraft or what I might call nano-exploration.

State of the Blog (2011-2012)

Yes, folks it's time again for the annual year-in-review here on HTWT. I'll link to last year's post so that when I come back here next year I can follow the digital trail of breadcrumbs into my own past. Without fear of reversal, I can say that this past year was truly an exceptional one on just about every level. Right now things are really looking up for the future and I hope that my current streak continues.

A Crisis in Canadian Science?

 The Experimental Lakes and the PEARL Arctic research lab are two examples of recent cuts to Scientific Research by the Government of Canada. Should Canadian Scientists be concerned about the future of research?

"Read the directions, even if you don't follow them" is a famous maxim from a 1997 column in the Chicago Tribune written by Mary Schmich which has direct relevance to the relationship between Science and Politics. There is concern here in Canada that the advice of Scientists is increasingly ignored and even unwanted in Political Circles.

For several years, a low-level conflict between the current Canadian federal government and many scientists has been brewing. However, late last year and early into the spring this sentiment has crystalized and broken out into the mainstream. There have been layoffs at many government ministries, talk of eliminating research scientists from government payrolls entirely, an increased emphasis on controlling the message within the public service, the termination of the position of Science Advisor and the closing or de-funding of several significant pieces of scientific infrastructure including Insite, the long-form census, the ozone network, the PEARL arctic research station and the experimental lakes.

I've been wondering for a while now just what I could contribute to this debate. There have been many petitions (ELA, PEARL, Census, Ozone). But with yesterday's protests in Ottawa and today's column in Maclean's by Julia Belluz, I feel like I can no longer be a simple signatory to such documents. In short, there are a few things worth emphasizing at a deeper level then the simple decrying of specific actions by the current government. A step back and a more thoughtful approach is required.

Vastly Different Worlds (WW114 - Season One Finale!)

Season One of Western Worlds clues up tonight with my interview of Dr. Jaymie Matthews (pictured above) of the University of British Columbia. We'll be back on Monday, July 30th for Season Two, starting off with a discussion of the Mars Science Laboratory.

In his work as an anthropologist, the famed scientist Jared Diamond is known to express his fondness for the idea of a "natural experiment." What he means by this is that some systems are so large and complex and the ramifications of changing variables so severe that it would be impossible to simulate these systems in the laboratory or the real world. So, instead, what we do is to look at the world around us and its history. For significant events, if we can determine their proximate and ultimate causes and understand the variables in play we can understand the relationship between cause and effect. For instance, we don't need to go out and remove all the trees from an island to understand what deforestation does to the culture living there - the history of Easter Island tells us this.

Similarly, in Astronomy we are lucky that there are examples of just about every structure that exists both today and, through the finite speed of light, in the past. We didn't have to reconstruct the positions of all the near stars to understand what a galaxy looks like from all angles, there are examples of every type in every orientation out there, just waiting to be observed. And we understand the life-cycle of stars from birth to death even though the process requires more time than life has been on Earth because we can see examples of every stage out there.

Similarly, we can use Exoplanets to tell us what our own solar system and our own planet would be like were the conditions a little bit different. Earlier this year we heard from Nikku Madhusudhan about what might happen if Carbon exceeded Oxygen in abundance. This episode, we explore the full gamut of possibilities from planets both nearer and further from their parent stars than we, some with highly eccentric orbits that give them phenomenal seasons. This tells us about climate in general and its ability to regulate planetary temperature and weather. For that reason, this episode is entitled "Vastly Different Worlds." And like what we have learned from studying the clouds on Jupiter and, yes, the dunes on Mars, it can improve our understanding of our own planet and the processes that affect the world we experience.

It's a great way to cap off our season! And like the interview with David Southwood, there's a little something for everyone in the work of Dr. Matthews. As usual, my on-air intro is under the cut. After you listen to this episode, be sure to head on over to our Survey and help to pick out what episodes we'll air over the summer. Have a great couple of months and don't forget to make World Enough and Time for us again the week before Curiosity lands on Mars 10 PM EDT on Monday, July 30!

A Puzzle of Winds

The composition "Seasonal Winds" by my favourite artist and photographer Greg Martin imagines what 400 km/h would look like ripping down Chasma Borealis on Mars. It's too bad such atmospheric phenomena don't exist since they make for such great art and literature. However, the story of how this misconception has propagated itself is an interesting study in the history of planetary science. Go to http://www.experiencetheplanets.com/ to download a high resolution version of the above image.

This spring I set myself a puzzle to solve. As an atmospheric scientist working on Mars, you get used to hearing from other disciplines about the tremendous winds that this planet has to offer. "They happen twice each year as the winter hemisphere moves from North to South and back again - all that CO2 sublimates and rushes towards the other pole." If not this story, then it is tales of some kind of a self-sustaining instability in the global dust storms which occur periodically. However it happens, this tremendous wind has been invoked to explain all manner of features on the surface of Mars.

By the mid 1990s, the existence of such winds was common knowledge extending even into the Science Fiction world. Two highly awarded novels - Greg Bear's "Moving Mars"and Kim Stanley Robinson's "Red Mars" - both have major plot points where such winds are important. In the former, a large pressure wave kicked up by a dust storm and featuring supersonic winds disturbs Casseia Majumdar and her new husband on their honeymoon and, temporarily, provides the environmental conditions necessary for reviving past martian life. In "Red Mars" colonists Nadia and and Arkady are nearly killed when their dirigible is thrown off course in an intense dust storm. When they go outside to repair damage, they can barely stand up, even though the pressure is only 12 milibars (hence the winds must be enormous!) Both of these occurrences are significant because they postulate Mars as it exists today, not some distant terraformed future.

That would be all well and good except these winds don't actually exist! The highest windspeed recorded by our landed missions, our best determinant of ground level windspeed on Mars, was 16 m/s (~58 km/h or 36 mph) for the Phoenix Lander. You might say: "that's all well and good, but Phoenix only lasted 152 sols during northern summer, a fairly quiescent time." You would be right, however, the much longer 2245-sol (~7 Earth Year/3.5 Martian Year) Viking Lander missions saw the entire seasonal cycle several times over and were operating during the two "great dust storms of 1977." Their record shows no windspeed in excess of 19 m/s (68 km/h or 43 mph).

Practice makes Perfect (WW113)

Dr. Dean Eppler, space suit expert and 2011 Science Lead for the NASA Desert RATS Team sat down with our own Marianne Mader at LPSC this year and you'll have the chance to hear that interview later on tonight. Much of what they talked about focused on something called "Analogue Missions" which are practice space missions completed on Earth. Why would you want to hold such an exercise? Well, for one thing it's much cheaper to conduct a space mission on the Earth and much safer for the astronauts. That means that you can try lots of different tools and techniques to figure out what works and what doesn't.


This is important because astronaut time is extraordinarily valuable. Say you could design, build and deliver a capable lunar rover for ~$1b and that the median expected lifetime on the lunar surface was something like 5 years. With 8 hours of ops per day (average), that gives us an hourly cost of something like $100k/hour. However, a mission to the moon for two weeks (~70 hrs EVA) might cost something like ~$10b/astronaut. So that's about $100m/hour for humans. If we assume a Phoenix-like multiplier, i.e. that 152 sols of operations could have been conducted in a couple of hours by humans, you get that human time is ~600 times more productive than is robot time. Call it an even 1000 times. Thus, the cost per datum gathered is about the same, but an hour of human time wasted is equivalent to over four months of robot time wasted, so even a small cost in human time is extremely expensive. Worse, you loose the contemplation time that robots give you to convince yourself and the rest of the science team that you are making the correct decisions.


One of the focuses for D-RATS is to find ways to make that human time more productive through innovative use of technology. Often they test combinations of different tools, rovers and humans working cooperatively and so on. It's a challenging problem on many levels and D-RATS aren't the only team trying to improve our knowledge here. We've done a couple of analogue missions here at Western for the CSA which I am proud to say I've been a part of as a Co-Investigator (and have written about before in this space). You can read more about our activities at our "Anablog" and our first paper discussing how we ran mission control can be found here. If you're in the D.C. Area, why not go and listen to WW Co-Host Raymond Francis talk a little bit about how rovers and humans interacted at the GLEX Conference?


Want to know more? My intro is under the cut and don't forget to tune into Western Worlds on Astronomy.fm at 10PM tonight after 365 Days of Astronomy and the News.

Swords into Plowshares (WW112)

 

Ralph McNutt (pictured above) has had a long and successful career working as a scientist on a great many missions from Voyager through Cassini to New Horizons and his current role as project scientist for Mercury Messenger. Like previous guest David Southwood, his specialty is space physics, a field with broad applicability across the solar system.

However, when Dr. McNutt spoke with our co-host Raymond Francis at this year's LPSC, it was on a different, yet no less important topic. What Voyager, Cassini and New Horizons have in common is a reliance on nuclear power to provide electricity to their computers, scientific instruments and onboard systems. You just can't do deep space exploration without these nuclear batteries, powered by Plutonium 238. However, production of Pu-238 stopped many years ago in the United States and current stocks to run spacecraft have been purchased from the Russians.

However, the lack of Pu-238 is starting to approach crisis levels. This is an issue that the DPS has spoken out strongly about for several years. As such, the US Congress has sought ways to restart the production of this material domestically for spacecraft usage. Unfortunately, agreements between the DoE and NASA have kept falling through. For many years the language Authorizing NASA to restart production was set-out in law, but no money was Appropriated for that purpose (The US has a two-stage budget process in which not everything an agency is legally permitted to do is actually funded). This year, it looks like things might be changing with NASA expected to receive approximately $15 million for plutonium restart in the president's budget request.

In the meantime, the plutonium shortage has helped spur the interest of engineers to try to improve the efficiency of Nuclear Batteries. Interestingly, the decay energy of Pu-238 goes almost entirely into creating heat which means that they are particularly helpful when thermal energy is what is ultimately desired. But the main problem is that by moving around heat to keep components warm, or to increase the efficiency (such as with a sterling cycle) you introduce moving parts with non-infinite duty cycles. Just like the human heart, all such components will ultimately stop beating, bringing the missions they power to an end.

We don't always focus on the technical aspects here at WW, but this episode is a fascinating study of a critical technology for space exploration and is not to be missed. You can find a copy of the episode here and, as usual, my intro is under the cut.

Diamonds on the Blackest Velvet (WW111)

Tonight's guest on WW is Nikku Madhusudhan (shown above in a photo by Beverly Schaefer) as we return once more to the topic of extrasolar planets. It's a fascinating field that has grown in leaps and bounds since the first planets were observed around pulsars in the ealy 1990s and around a main sequence star in 1995. Since that time our techniques have expanded and the variety of planetary systems is added to almost daily.

Astoundingly, we can now deduce details about the atmospheres of some of these extrasolar planets, but only the ones relatively large and relatively close-in around brighter stars. But even in this small subset of the infamous "hot jupiters" there is amazing variety. A good part of Dr. Madhusudhan's fame comes from confirming the existence of planets for which Carbon is more abundant than oxygen. Such places were long theorized to exist because Oxygen and Carbon are produced in similar quantities by the proceses in stars that create elements heavier than hydrogen. This "nucleosynthesis" produces a characteristic pattern that we can observe in the abundances of elements within our own solar system (from wikipedia and shown below):

Take a close look. You'll notice a few things. First, the elements created in the big bang, Hydrogen and Helium Dominate - we have not yet come close to processing all of the material in the universe through stars. Secondly, you'll notice the stair-step pattern favoring even-numbered elements. This comes from the relative ease of building up heavier nucleii from "alpha particles," helium-2 nucleii and the greater stability of the nucleii thus formed. But the abundances fall off as the atomic number increases because it gets harder and harder to form larger and larger nucleii since more energy is required. In particular, beyond Iron, nuclear fusion does not yeild any energy, and so you get a pile-up that allows Iron to stand up above the pack.

What about Carbon and Oxygen? Well, these are synthesized largely through an efficient nuclear fusion process called the CNO-cycle in stars a bit more massive than the sun and up. Depending on the specific circumstances of the stellar furnace in question, either one of Carbon or Oxygen can come out a bit ahead. In the building of our own solar system, it was Oxygen. And so we have a solar system whose solids are composed mainly of ices (H2O) and silicate-bearing rocks (SiO4). By weight, Oxygen is not just a significant part of our atmosphere but comprises nearly 60% of the Earth's solid matter too.

Had the balance been different, a system of carbon compounds with different properties would have resulted. By showing that such systems do, in fact, exist Dr. Madhusudhan has expanded our view of the universe and the kinds of variety that exists out there. I hope you enjoy listening to his interview as much as I did. As always, a transcript of my intro is under the cut.

Tempted by the Fates (WW110)

 

Dr. Catherine Neish stands atop one of the Kelso Dunes in the Mohave Dessert, California. Check out her website to learn more about her publications, activities and to view a slideshow of Catherine in front of things geologic.

We come now to our tenth episode. For those of you who think in astronomical terms, that means that we have increased our repertoire by an order of magnitude since our first presentation! For our tenth, we introduce a new interviewer to the mix - Marianne Mader. Her choice of interview subject is one whom I know well. My office mate for nearly four years at the University of Arizona and Titan expert, Dr. Catherine Neish of APL at Johns Hopkins. Those regular readers of this blog will know that nearly two years ago, I interviewed Dr. Neish for our sister program "York Universe." Luckily for us, she has always had time to speak to us and to you about the goings on out at Titan and close to home with our Moon.

In that respect, Dr. Neish is somewhat unique, someone who works across the solar system, but mainly on satellites instead of their primaries. However, Titan is large enough that it can be considered a world in its own right and in many ways is as interesting if not more so than some full-fledged planetary bodies. I've always been impressed by Dr. Neish's ability to make a lasting contribution no matter where she goes and you can include our analogue space missions here at Western University in that mix. Last summer, she was an integral member of Mission Control.

The ILSR Analogue Team relaxes at the Grad Club following the successful completion of week one of operations. Your humble narrator is located at the end of the table, clutching a green concoction. Catherine is at right (my left). Incidentally, WW Co-Host Raymond Francis can be seen at my right and Marianne Mader is second from the right.

As usual, my introduction can be found beneath the cut.

Across the Disc of Crimson (WW109)

Dave McCarter of the London Chapter of the RASC (pictured above) will be our guide this week on Western Worlds. Co-host Alyssa Gilbert spoke to him about the real star of the show, seen below!

The 2004 Venus transit as photographed in Hong Kong by Wikipedia user Mswggpai.

The transit isn't to be missed - there won't be another one for over a century, so if you're located in an area that will have a view, be sure to take it in. While I should point out that you should never look directly at the sun without serious protection for your eyes, if you do have a pair of welder's glasses, you should be able to see the spot that is Venus with the naked eye. To find out if you'll be in line to take a look, find a map below courtesy of Fred Espenak of the Goddard Space Flight Centre via Wikipedia, once more:

If you're not in the light toned areas, why not consider a trip overseas? If you do decide to take in this astronomical sight, arid locations are especially helpful. In 2004 Dave caught the transit on the island of crete and once again he will be close to the centre of the transit window on the big island of Hawai'i on the summit of Mauna Kea. Listen to our interview to hear some of Dave's tips or look below the cut for Alyssa's guide to ressources on the transit and my introduction!

Upon a Peak in Darien (WW108)

Our guest on WW this week was David Southwood. He and I both had the joy of working on the Huygens probe in 2005. Of course, our participation on that project was at very different levels - he as senior project leadership with ESA for many years, myself as a graduate student in the US contingent of the DISR Instrument. I was probably amongst the most johnny-come-lately participants, having started in 2004 on a project that had existed in one form or another since 1972.

I mention Huygens because Professor Southwood lists that mission amongst the highlights of his career. However, he has participated in more scientific projects, space missions and scientific endeavors and has won more awards and accolades than I can possibly list in this space. To give you a flavour, he has worked on missions to every classical planet in the solar system and astronomical projects beyond it, was part of the magnetometer team that discovered evidence of liquid water on Europa, led the Cassini Magnetometer Team and has contributed greatly to the study of space weather.

I was extremely fortunate to get the chance to speak with Professor Southwood as he was in Toronto a few weeks ago to give the annual J. Tuzo Wilson lecture at the University of Toronto. I also need to thank his host, Dr. Nigel Edwards (a former prof of mine, back in my undergraduate days) for fitting WW into his and David's schedule at the last possible moment. We and our listeners appreciate your flexibility and accommodation!

What makes this interview one of my favourites is that Professor Southwood really epitomizes what we are trying to do here on Western Worlds. Not only do we want to share the Science of other worlds with you, but also how we get there (Engineering/Space Technology) how the decisions about where to fly get made (Space Agency/Space Politics) and how all of that comes back around to you, our listeners (Education/Public Outreach).  Professor Southwood has led a hybrid career that has combined the best of all of these worlds, and I for one, will take his advice to heart. If I can achieve in my own career even a few percent of what he has been able to do in his, I will count it a resounding success.

If you missed our broadcast, fear not! You can download a copy of Professor Southwood's interview from the WW webpage here. As usual, my introduction is under the cut.

Explorers in the Old Fashioned Sense (WW107)

(Above) Roger stands next to a mock-up of the MSL Rover "Curiosity" The mast "head" which contains the LIBS aperture is up and to the right of Roger.
(Below) The ChemCam instrument in the lab. The LIBS aperture is to the right.

Arguably, the Planetary Science Event of the Year (TM) is going to be the landing of Curiosity on Mars on August the 5th. Tonight we have an interview with the leader of one of the instrument teams - Dr. Roger Wiens of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Wiens leads the ChemCam instrument which includes the infamous LIBS laser (that cyclops eye on top of the rover's mast). I'm hoping to use this instrument extensively to perform atmospheric sensing work so I know I will be talking a great deal with Dr. Wiens over the months and years which follow.

Since my introduction goes into detail about the rover, I'll leave it there for today. As usual, you can find that introduction under the cut.

The Landscape in the Sky (WW106)

This Monday past marks the first interview of Parshati Patel, as she becomes the fourth member of the WW crew to try her hand at interviewing! She certainly couldn't have picked a better subject then Dr. Travis Barman (pictured above) of the Lowell Observatory and the results speak for themselves. If you haven't had the chance to listen, drop by the WW page and pick up a copy of the interview!

The solar system has, for a long time, been our own backyard to astronomers - out beyond our home but not as exotic or enticing as that which lies beyond. But, exo-planets are an interesting cutting-edge convergence of Planetary Science and mainstream Astronomy each of which counts this field as their own. It's a productive rivalry with "Planetary Science" missions like Kepler, a space mission currently conducting a planetary census, coordinating with "Astrophysics" telescopes on the ground to confirm discoveries of new worlds. The statistical results then get put into models, such as those of the Nice group, that help to tell us why our own solar system looks the way it does today. By understanding the initial conditions required to make our solar system "work" and how ours differs from others, we can get a handle on the process more generally.

It's a fascinating study and the explosion in planets over the last decade is nothing less than breath-taking. The expansion in techniques is no less so. While it may be awhile before we get to see them up close and know them the way we do our own solar system, Dr. Barman's direct images of exoplanets far from their parent stars brings to mind what Uranus and Neptune might have looked like a century ago. Who knows what the future in this fast-breaking field will bring? I hope you enjoy the episode, and, as always, my introduction is underneath the cut.