On July 14th NASA received a call home from the New Horizons Spacecraft sent to study Pluto. This contact with Earth was confirmation that the spacecraft had survived and that humanity had now explored the mysterious ends of our solar system.
>> Here we go.
[♪ Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ♪]
♪ Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
♪ Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
♪ As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
♪ Cyclotron and any and every mic
♪ You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
♪ Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
♪ Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
♪ I’m every element around
♪ Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
♪ Iodine nitrate activate
♪ Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
♪ Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
♪ Careful, careful with those ingredients
♪ They could explode and blow up if you drop them
♪ And they hit the ground
(Regina) On July 14th, NASA’s new horizon space craft had its closest approach to the dwarf plant Pluto. This space craft took 9 years to reach Pluto on a mission to study an unexplored region of our solar system. What you are about to hear is a public event hosted by the Spark Museum and Western Washington University called Pluto Revealed. It was also our first live taping of Spark Science. We start with the audience’s reaction to the live stream from mission control right before the world knew the New Horizon space craft survived its fly by.
>> When you were at the console about this time, waiting for the signal, for something to happen, what did it feel like?
>> Extremely anxious. Whether it was something that put something in orbit or something as simple as, would you ever stress out so much just for a signal?
>> No, you just have to sit there and wait and be patient. On this mission you learn that patience is a virtue.
>> Especially after this one that was 9.5 years away for something else to happen.
>> Right. What’s a couple of minutes?
>> I think we can go to mission operations now. Let’s take a look inside.
[Buzzing background noise.]
>> OK, we’re in lock with carrier. Stand by for telemetry.
>> [Inaudible.] 005254
>> The second channel [inedible]
>> This is operations manager Alice Bowman, Karl Wittenburg, mission operations team next to her.
>> What were you saying?
>> We’re on a deep space network.
>> Lock on symbols.
>> That’s the first step for getting data.
>> OK. Copy that we’re in lock with telemetry with the space craft.
[Applause and cheering.]
>> I see a lot of green numbers too.
>> Green is good!
[Applause and cheering.]
>> You gotta get that Man.
>> OK. Subsystems as you get . . .
>> Wow.
[Applause and cheering.]
>> Subsystems please report your status as you get enough data.
>> The subsystems are reporting their status.
[Crowd chatter.]
>> Mom this is RF on Pluto one.
>> Go ahead RF.
>> RF is reporting nominal carrier power, nominal symbol to noise ratio for telemetry. RF is Nominal.
>> Copy that. RF nominal.
[Crowd chatter.]
>> [Inaudible.] This is autonomy on Pluto One.
>> Go ahead autonomy.
>> Autonomy is very happy to report nominal status no rules have fired.
[Applause and cheering.]
>> Go ahead CNDH.
>> CNDH reports nominal status. Our SSRs are where we expect them to be which means we have reported the expected amount of data.
>> Copy that. Looks like we have a good day to report.
[Applause and cheering.]
>> We have a healthy space craft. We’ve recorded data of the Pluto system and we’re outbound for Pluto.
[Applause and cheering.]
[Laughing.]
(Regina) We started Spark Science, our radio show, which is broadcast out of KMRE, which is the radio station that is broad cast out of here at the Spark Museum. [Cheering.]
I just want to do a quick thank you to Suzanne and Katie and Eric and Robert who are upstairs. Suzanne is the station manager. They do such a good job recording all of this. All of this audio stuff is about them. You have no idea how bad an event is if this doesn’t work. So, thank you so much. I want to give them a hand. [Applause.]
Alright. If you saw our flyer, I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff and here is my co-host Jordan Baker.
(Jordan) Hello everybody.
(Regina) Let’s clap for him too. Why not?
[Applause.]
(Jordan) I showed up.
(Regina) He showed up. He is part of the improve troop down at the Upfront theater. What else would you like to say?
(Jordan) I’m a butcher.
(Regina) He’s a butcher and a baker. [Laughing.]
(Jordan) It’s my last name.
(Regina) It’s his last name. You may have heard me say, “um” and “like.” Jordan and I have a problem with saying “like” and “um.” We have the same disease where we say that a lot. My students, I don’t own them or anything, but Western students are going to be passing out, if you want to participate and help us get away from that habit, I’ve passed out signs that say “like” with an X through it and “um” with a big X through it. So, if during the show you hear me or Jordan, Jordan and I, say “um” or “like”, I want you to silently lift it up so I can see it and be shamed.
(Jordan) Correction through shaming.
(Regina) Correction through shaming, yes. So they’re going to pass those out. There’s only 20 each, 20 ums and 20 likes. If you’re interested in helping me get away from this habit go ahead and pass them out. Quee [sp?] and Janelle, they’re going to pass them out.
Again, silently lift “like.” Um, this is going to be recorded and it’s going to be on our podcast. It will be aired on KMRE, um, if you like something and you cheer it, thank you thank you, already starting, [laughing] its working! KMRE 102.3 FM here in Bellingham. It’s a low powered station so if you tune to 102.3 you can hear not just me and Jordan but other things. If you like somethings, it’s totally working! It’s working! Um.
[Laughter.]
Welcome to Spark Science everyone! We can cheer now.
[Applause and cheering.]
Alright. Like I said earlier, that was a proper like. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff, I teach physics and astronomy at Western Washington University and this is my co-host Jordan Baker.
(Jordan) Hello.
(Regina) Hello. That was pretty momentous that we just saw. We just saw the NASA feed and the New Horizon space craft is alive.
(Jordan) A gentleman came out of the door with his arms raised up like he just won the super bowl. That was pretty awesome.
(Regina) There are a lot of American flags waving. It made me feel patriotic actually. We are here today with our four guests. I’m going to let them introduce themselves. Go ahead. Actually I have a few questions for you. Once you introduce yourself, I want you to say your name, what you do, where you went to school or grew up, you pick one, and if you think Pluto should actually still be a planet.
[Laughter.]
(Casey) That’s a loaded question. My name is Casey Dreier. I am the director of advocacy for the planetary society the world’s largest space advocacy organization. I grew up in Iowa City and I went to college at Overland in Ohio. No?
[Cheering.]
Maybe one other?
(Regina) Loud people.
(Casey) I believe that Pluto is the king of the dwarf planets. [Laughter.]
(Regina) That’s safe.
(Casey) That’s an accurate thing to say.
(Regina) Right. Before I move on to Melisa, I want Jordan to answer those questions.
(Jordan) Let’s see. I went to school in Lynden, I didn’t graduate. That’s why I’m here.
(Regina) Is anyone else from Lynden, who went to school in Lynden?
(Jordan) There’s a couple of people.
(Regina) There’s one in the back. We all escaped. What do you do thought? Other than be a host at Spark Science with me?
(Jordan) I’m a butcher. We already talked about it.
(Regina) No, that wasn’t recorded. The other thing. What other thing do you do?
(Jordan) I do improve at the Upfront Theater Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays 8 o’clock 10 o’clock. Check it out everybody.
(Regina) I still haven’t. This is our ninth show and I still haven’t done it.
(Jordan) You’re the worst childhood friend ever.
(Regina) I am.
(Jordan) No. I don’t want Pluto to be a planet.
(Regina) Did you have a fight with him or her?
(Jordan) No, it’s just, it’s a Disney character. It haunted me as a child.
(Regina) Alright. Melissa you are next.
(Melissa) I’m Melissa Rice. I’m a professor of planetary science in the geology department and the department of physics and astronomy at Western Washington University. I’m kind of local. I grew up on the Sammamish plateau on the east side of Seattle. Any east-siders around?
[A person hoots.]
[Laughing]
Alright. Traffic! Then I wanted to get as far away from home as possible so I went to college on the east coast at Wellesley College nearby Boston. I stayed there for grad school, Cornell University, then I decided that there really is no place better in the world than the Pacific Northwest so I am fortunate to be back and I think that Pluto should be called a planet. If I was queen of the astronomical union, I would call Pluto a planet. I would call the Earth’s moon a planet. I would call a lot of large asteroids plants.
(Regina) Wow.
(Melissa) We talk about, in geology when we are classifying different types of features, there are two types of classifiers, they’re the lumpers and the splitters. I’m a big lumper. For me a planet is something I can do geology on so anything with a big surface that has active geology happening on it at some point in history, to me that’s a planet.
(Regina) Wow. We have a split group here.
[Applause.]
(Regina) Some people are clipping! Mikes next.
(Mike) I’m Mike Kraft. I am a geologist. I am a research associate up at Western Washington University right now in the geology department. I’ve been studying Mars for a while now. I grew up in Western Pennsylvania in a little town called Warren. I went to state university of New York in Buffalo for undergrad and Arizona State for my PhD. I’ve been working on Mars for a little while so this is new to me but it’s so exciting. As far as Pluto as a planet. I’m going to walk in step with Melissa here. I’m a geologist and I care about solid bodies. I think of planetary bodies. Things that are solid. We can look at them, take pictures, and understand the processes that are going on on these solid spheres of rock and ice that are floating around the sun.
(Melissa) So is Jupiter not a planet?
(Mike) That’s a plant too. [Laughing.] It’s a gas giant.
(Kirsten) I’m Kirsten Firstad. I’m also an instructor in the geology department and the physics department at Western Washington University. My background is in geology and geochemistry. I did my undergrad at McAllister College in Nebraska and my doctorate at the University of Olso in Norway. I’ve only been in the Pacific Northwest for about 6 months now but I’m very happy to be here.
(Regina) Good answer.
(Kirsten) In terms of Pluto’s status, I’m a geologist I agree with the last two speakers. If there is a solid body that you can look at geologic processes on then it is definitely of interest to me. I guess I would add that it’s a planet with a little asterisk afterwards. I think the dwarf designation is relevant in that it’s a size designation and on different planets we have different processes depending on their size.
As you pointed out, is Jupiter a planet or not, there’s definitely different things going on on Jupiter than there are on Earth. Largely due to the fact that it’s so enormous. Comparably, there would be very different processes going on on Pluto compared to Earth or Jupiter also because of its smaller size. I would do the planet with an asterisk at the end.
(Regina) There’s a spectrum of answers here.
(Jordan) You can say dwarf planet, that’s OK.
[Laughing.]
(Jordan) Someone can agree with me on this.
(Regina) I will answer this question because I made you all answer it. I grew up in Lynden with Jordan.
(Jordan) Holla.
(Regina) Yeah. Holla. And I went to Western Washington University for undergrad. I got my PhD from Washington State University.
>> Woohoo!
(Regina) Yeah! Woohoo! Go Cougs!
(Jordan) That was enthusiastic.
(Regina) I think that it is a dwarf planet. I think that is a fine designation. I think there is an object between Mars and the next one Jupiter, I’m the best astrophysicist ever, there an abject slightly large series and I feel like, one of the like things, I feel that if you have an object that large, then you have to start naming all of these objects planets. Maybe I’m just elitist. I think it should be a dwarf planet still. I’m with you Casey.
(Casey) Thanks.
(Melissa) What’s wrong with just naming all of those large objects planets?
(Regina) There’s too many. [Laughing.] That’s not a good argument. I have this many fingers.
(Jordan) We’re not all inclusive here.
(Regina) That’s right. [Laughing.] See there’s one part of the official planet definition that I like, that it has to be round. That’s getting at Christian’s point exactly. It has to be big enough to have gravity pulling on all its sides with enough force to be making it this nice hydrostatic shape of round. I think that gives us the size but beyond that I don’t care if it has something else in its same orbital path. I don’t care if it’s orbiting the sun or another bigger planet. I’ll say it. Size matters. [Laughing.]
(Regina) Yes. So all of the moons of Jupiter we were saying right? And the moons of Saturn, or would those be . . .
>>. I would call them planets. I would call them satellite planets.
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]
(Regina) Planets that orbit other planets. I would love to go to Europa. That’s like water world.
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]
♪ Next stop
♪ That ice cold
♪ No cell of life on that light globe
♪ This one’s for them dark worlds
♪ Them dwarf worlds
♪ Low mass-ter pieces
♪ Chillin’
♪ Millin’
♪ Round in Kuiper Belt city
♪ Some folks swoon
♪ For Sailor Moon
♪ But Pluto, mm, so pretty
♪ She ain’t hot
♪ But hot damn
♪ Got pole ice atop Charon and
♪ She ain’t hot
♪ But hot damn
>> This is spark science where we explore stories of human curiosity. If you’re just joining us you’re listening to KMRE-LP 102.3 FM in Bellingham broadcasting from the Spark Museum of electric invention.
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]♪ She ain’t hot
♪ But hot damn
♪ Say my name I’m a Pluto fan
♪ She ain’t hot
♪ But hot damn
♪ Not a bad use of grant money
♪ Break it down
♪ Nix drifting into view yo
♪ Hydra say benvenuto
♪ Well so long Mars, and later Bruno
♪ This outbound probe gonna visit Pluto
♪ This outbound probe gonna visit Pluto
♪ This outbound probe gonna visit Pluto
♪ There’s a planet inside of that little spot
♪ Don’t believe me just watch!
♪ Come on!
(Regina) If you’re just joining us this is Spark Science. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff with my co-host Jordan Baker.
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]
♪ Get hot hot damn
♪ Don’t believe me just watch.
(Jordan) Welcome everybody back to Spark Science. I’m Jordan Baker, we’re at the Pluto Revealed, our first live taping.
(Regina) I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff. Welcome back.
[Applause.]
Let’s not clap for Jordan. We’re broadcasting out of the Spark Museum. I’m here with Casey Dryer, Melissa Rice, Mike Craft and Kirsten. We were just about to look at the images that have been already taken by the New Horizons space craft and sent to us. Low battery on our image here. For those listening on the radio we will have these images on our website so you will be able to go and find the page and look at the images that we are looking at right now. We’ll try to be descriptive, because again this is radio, of what we’re looking at. Here we go, Casey take it away.
(Casey) We promised you Pluto revealed. Allow me to reveal Pluto. This is Pluto five years ago, 2010, best Hubble picture I showed you earlier. This is Pluto yesterday as seen by New Horizons.
[Applause.]
I have no idea what’s going on on the surface. Maybe our scientific gusts can comment on this.
(Regina) We basically went from something that was very smooth to something to an actual planetoid. A dwarf planet.
(Casey) A dwarf planet. What’s fascinating here is the pictures we will get tomorrow are going to be 100 times better than this. This is just a preview of coming attractions.
(Regina) Since this show will air later I’ll post those images up while somebody is listening to the show.
(Casey) Say that again?
(Regina) We actually don’t know what the white is. I’m going to turn this over to our geologist.
(Jordan) I think the white is in a heart shape. It might be a love note to us for us. [Laughing.] It’s about 1.6 million miles away that this picture was taken. That’s really close right for a 3 billion mile away planet. We’re right there.
(Regina) How close is it going to get?
(Casey) It’s going to get 7 thousand miles above the surface. Or it did get, it happened this morning. It already happened.
(Regina) (Mike, can you tell us something about this image, geology wise?
(Mike) These are phenomenal. This picture is phenomenal. For any other reason, you’re sitting there and you’re actually doing this planetary geology analysis yourselves while you’re sitting there. We’re seeing that this is not just a big uniform sphere where everything looks the same. We see big differences on the planet here.
As a geologist and as someone who studies these things, my personal real interest in doing planetary geology and geology in general is that it’s so fun to compare different planets to each other and see what they look like. The planets, I’ll use Melissa’s definition of a planet hear, when we’re looking at solid surface planets, a lot of them have diversity on them.
They might have a dichotomy, there’s two very distinct different trains on them. What we want to know is what processes caused that and what new materials are they made out of. That’s why New Horizons is there, to try to figure out right? I don’t know what that stuff is. We can start taking guesses based on the shape of things. There are craters.
(Jordan) It looks like a golf ball.
(Kerstin) Part of the reason why we can see anything, there’s different colors. Sometimes the observations we should make are so obvious that we forget to make them. We see this because there are color differences right? There’s a really light area and there’s a really dark area. Then there’s a spectrum of, you know, colors in between. Or if not colors, at least shades of grey. Those shades of grey are what outline different geometric features. I think someone mentioned craters. Do you see craters potentially?
>> Yeah, lots of them.
(Kerstin) I see a big one right here and one on the limb of the planet down here. It’s a little pimple. The first one the Melissa pointed out, do you guys notice anything a little different about that particular crater? There’s a little dot in the middle of it.
>> Is that a satellite? Surprise!
(Kerstin) Kind of a hole in one.
(Casey) We also see near that crater, we see lines coming off of it. When we’re trying to figure out some of these processes we’re very interested to know, is it an exogenic process, meaning is something happening outside of the planet like meteors hitting the planet, or, is there something going on inside the planet? When a planets form they have heat and they try to lose that heat over time. That’s what drives a lot of the processes on earth.
We’re still losing internal heat on Earth. It’s so exciting to see this really tiny planetary body floating around. There’s probably some heat loss going on in there. This is what we call tectonic features or these big ridings. Very awesome because there’s something going on inside this planet. It’s passed, we don’t know how long ago certainly, but something has gone on that has driven geological processes from inside that planet. The planet was alive at some point.
>> [Inaudible.]
(Regina) Somebody just asked, do we know if it has an atmosphere or not?
(Mike) The answer is yes. It has a very very tenuous atmosphere and it’s made of nitrogen. 98% nitrogen.
(Regina) I’ve heard a lot of people asking about this dark area that kind of surrounds the heart that Jordan mentioned. What is that? That’s my question.
(Melissa) We geologists would call that a low albedo feature.
[Laughing.]
(Melissa) That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s dark.
[Laughing.]
(Jordan) I was going to say, I think they make a pill for that.
[Laughing.]
(Casey) We’re seeing the color images. One of the scientific instruments is going to take spectra of all of these things to help them determine what all of this is made of. Is it correct or are they seeing organics on the surface? Have they detected that?
(Melissa) I don’t know if they detected organics or if they were known to be there before hand. I have heard that there are carbon bearing compounds on the surface and those interact with ultraviolet light to create dark compounds called tholians on the surface. That is about the extent that I can tell you about the dark stuff.
(Regina) Kerstin is nodding there. Are you saying the same thing?
(Kerstin) It was known previously and in the coming days, weeks, months, year, we’ll know more about any organic composition of the planet, it was thought that there were tholians here which Melissa said are these long polimerated compounds, so organic molecules, carbon bearing, nitrogen bearing molecules, that when UV radiation hits them they sort of link up together and make longer chain molecules.
They are a very simple organic molecule like methane or even amino acids could form in space, in dust clouds, in dusty gas clouds, in the interstellar medium, and then get picked you by comets or asteroids and be brought to planetary surfaces. Or, once they’re already on the planetary surface, as Casey mentioned there’s nitrogen, there’s also methane and carbon monoxide on Pluto.
Those molecules just being there as the sun’s UV radiation hits the planet, those smaller molecules can combine together to make the larger polimerated molecules. The larger they get, the heavier they are and the more they settle to the surface and can make a coating. That’s sort of the idea behind what could be composing the dark portion of the planet, which would be very interesting to have large possibly complex molecules you could ask, “Could there be life?”
As Mike mentioned, we don’t know the history of this planet, the heat that’s inside or the heat that’s left, we can calculate based on the radioactive elements that should have been in Pluto when it formed. We can calculate how much heat should have been produced by that radioactive element decay and from that it’s hypothesized that they’re deep within the crust or deep within the center, there could be a small layer of liquid water, or sort of a deep ocean buried between this sort of icy crust and any harder rockier silicate core.
(Regina) Continue what you were saying. There’s a new image right here. This is the top part, we can’t see the heart anymore, we can see the very top of Pluto.
(Kerstin) You can barely see that the North Pole here is redder. Casey, when you get to the false color images, that’s really going to pop.
(Regina) Let’s just skip forward to that.
(Casey) This is the day before. Notice how much blurrier it is. There’s that crater.
(Kerstin) That’s the dimpled crater.
(Casey) The satellite.
(Regina) The space base.
[Inaudible.]
(Casey) It’s about a 6.5 day rotation and it’s locked with its moon share. They face each other always.
(Kerstin) Here’s the same heart but in the color you can see that the right side is bluer and the left side is much yellower. This is a stretched color image. This is not what Pluto would look like to your eye but this is stretching our color data to fill the maximum color range so that it enhances the color differences between different sides of the surface.
Things that look blue are actually bluer just not as blue as they appear on the screen here. The same with the red stuff. This is just enhancing the redness and enhancing the blueness to the extreme.
(Jordan) Why do geologists or the planetary scientists do this?
(Kerstin) Planetary scientists, we always make these Andy Warhol, garish, false color images, because our visible spectrum that we can see with our own eyes, covers a wavelength range that is much different than the wave length range reflected off of a lot of planetary surfaces. In my work with color images of Mars, those images are all various shades of brownish, orang-ish, red.
There is nothing on the surface of Mars that reflects in the blue wave lengths and the green wave lengths but we make images that take Mars’ surface and stretch them through the green and the blue wave lengths so we can use our full visible spectrum to interpret it as much as we can about a very red surface. That’s what we’re doing here with Pluto. Pluto is not quite as red as Mars but it is a reddish planet. We’re just enhancing the color so that we can take advantage of our full visible range.
(Jordan) Kerstin I noticed that the heart you were just talking about, the two sides seem to be different. Kind of how you were speculating earlier.
(Kerstin) Yes. This is the type of image, because we can do the type of stretching, we do it purposely to see if there are any subtle differences that we wouldn’t notice without the stretching. As Casey pointed out, this is a prime example. It looks like the two halves of the heart are slightly different. Up here, the right side is blue and the left side is yellow.
I don’t exactly know what this means but, if we were talking about what Mike said as well as Melissa about super position and what material was on the surface first and then what might have landed on top of it, do you guys sort of see? What I’m seeing is that this red patch covers large swath of the planet and then there’s the yellow, let’s call it a large impact crater, that may or may not be true, it’s a good hypothesis, then the blue stuff looks like, you see the red material coming through the blue material.
This makes it seem like maybe the blue material is on top of the red stuff, right? It’s sort of splattered across or it used to be a continuous sheet that is now eroding away and now we see the red underneath. We can start thinking about what processes would place that blue material on top of the red material.
(Casey) We have a few minutes left, I want to make sure we see, this is Charon. This is the best picture from the same distance, 1.6 million miles away. We will get better pictures again in the coming weeks. This is still pretty spectacle. Charon was just a point of light, too.
>> How far is it from Pluto?
(Casey) That is a good question.
(Regina) We will think about that answer. We will take a break and during that break we will have people line up and there will be time to ask those questions. Alright.
[Applause.]
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]
♪ don’t believe me just watch ♪
♪ don’t believe me just watch ♪
♪ don’t believe me just watch ♪
♪ don’t believe me just watch ♪
♪ SWAP♪
♪ Pretty innit♪
♪ Looking at gas as solar winds hit it♪
♪ Alice sees ultraviolet♪
♪ For radio we got REX♪
♪ Then there’s♪
♪ PEPSSI♪
♪ LORRI♪
♪ Ralph, Venitia all ready♪
♪ Got thrust streams♪
♪ Of hydrazine♪
♪ Locking in the whole thing steady♪
(Jordan) This is Spark Science where we explore stories of human curiosity. If you’re just joining us, you’re listening to KMRELP [sp?] 102.3 FM in Bellingham, broadcasting from the Spark Museum of Electrical Invention on Bay Street.
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]
♪ Styx, we sail away to you, yo♪
♪ Kerberos, that ain’t no poodle♪
♪ We’re almost there, break out the brew yo♪
♪ This outbound probe gonna visit Pluto♪
♪ This outbound probe gonna visit Pluto♪
♪ This outbound probe gonna visit Pluto♪
♪ Every night we get clearer shots♪
♪ Don’t believe me just watch ♪
♪ Come on♪
(Jordan) Welcome back to Spark Science. We are at the Pluto Revealed, our first live show.
[Applause.]
(Regina) Welcome back to Spark Science. You’re listening to KMRE 102.3 fm. This is the audience question portion and the claps you just heard were not as loud as before because 90% of the crowd is gone. That’s OK we have question.
(Jordan) They were just embarrassed because they don’t have questions.
(Regina) It’s a long show. It’s been a long night. There’s been a lot of excitement. We saw the love note from Pluto. We were just talking about the images. Now we’re taking audience questions. I will turn it over to our audience right here. Go ahead and walk up to the mic and ask your question.
>> Thank you, good evening. My name is Ron Nelson from Bellingham. My question for the panel is, what’s next? As the probe goes out in the Kuiper belt what are we looking for as a big possible pay off. I understand the Kuiper belt is the building blocks of all of our planetary systems.
(Casey) I can tell you where it’s going to go. I’ll rely on the scientist to give you the bigger picture. The idea with New Horizons is that Pluto is just stop one. Ideally, they would find one of these tiny icy ancient Kuiper belt object and be able to fly by that as well. Actually, earlier this year, they had an unprecedented amount of time on the Hubble space telescope. They took I think, 8 weeks of observing time which has never happened before.
(Regina) As an astronomer that’s very great.
(Casey) That’s the freshest resource, Hubble time. They scanned the entire sky about where New Horizons could go after Pluto and they found three potential Kuiper belt objects. At this point they have narrowed it down to two. Both of them, depending on which one they choose, either one it would get there in 2019. Set your clocks now. We have four more years.
(Regina) That’s when we’ll have Mike and Kirsten back, 2019.
(Casey) Yes, 2019. We will be doing a fly by very similar to this of one of those Kuiper Belt objects, accept we will know a whole lot less about it than we knew about Pluto. For the bigger picture stuff, why the Kuiper Belt is important, I’ll turn that over to the scientists.
(Regina) Planetary geologists, go.
(Mike) It’s a place where commits come from. We’ve been studying commits and one of the great things about the solar system in general, if you go to Saturn for example and look at the satellites of Saturn, they all formed in the same environment. You may wonder why they are so different from each other. That’s amazing. You’d think they would be similar because they formed in the same spot, the same place. What about the Kuiper Belt objects, should we expect them to all be the same? What’s the diversity? As we see commits coming in, we get a sense of what might be out there but we don’t really know. It’s a small sampling of what’s out there. That’s sort of where I would be interested I think, looking at Kuiper Belt objects. Part of it is what the instrumentation is capable of with New Horizons.
(Kerstin) We’ll see what we can get.
(Regina) Thank you for your question. That was awesome.
>> Thank you.
[Applause.]
(Regina) Next question.
>> My name is Tom Dorsey and I come down from North Blaine. My intriguing and overall question is, how is the probes Viking through Voyager in theses outer objects, how is the light, I noticed they’re quiet bright, is there a light enhancement? Or, because as you get further and further away from the sun the light gets down to practically nothing? It’s amazing that these probes are so sensitive.
At Neptune for instance, I was quite amaze to see the brightness and the features of both Triton and the planet itself. Here we are at Pluto, and it’s so graphic, it’s so bright, I’ve been very curious whether that’s the natural light that the probe is picking up or is it enhanced by the equipment on the probes?
(Kerstin) I can say a little bit about that. At least on the front side, the side facing the sun, there is a little bit of light from the sun reaching these planets. It looks like a brought star. If you were on Pluto, the sun would look like a bright star. They say that the light reaching Pluto, the surface, is the equivalent to what we would have maybe with a full moon. There is some light and you can see around. You can think back to your full moon nights and how much you can see. From a human perspective it’s something like that. I’m not sure what the instrumentation does.
(Casey) It’s a function of sensitivity. The CCDs that they’re using but also long exposures. That was actually, when you talk about Voyager, it was not designed to go to Uranus or Neptune. They had to write and upload new software to Voyager.
Voyager was a little different. They had big cameras on a big platform that could track independently of the space craft. As the space craft would fly by, the camera would track to follow its source. They had to do that very very precisely to get the long exposures. They had problems with the vibrations of the space craft throwing it off. Fundamentally it’s just exposure at a fundamental level. These are long exposures. How long are exposures on Mars that you take?
(Kerstin) Seconds sometimes. Most space craft images, these are not what the planet would look like if you were sitting abroad New Horizons looking at this. It is enhanced in the ways that Casey described. We are sucking in more photons than the human eye would see with these sophisticated cameras.
The surface of Pluto here, it would look much, much dimmer to your eye. Even the surface of Mars from the pictures we see coming back from the rovers, to a human standing on there, it would look like low light, twilight like images. We enhance them so they, again, are essentially reproducing what those surfaces would look like on the Earth under a normal amount of sunlight being received from the Earth to make them more familiar to our experiences.
(Casey) Two more things to add to that because it is a really interesting problem to deal with. One is, if you google the term “Pluto time”, there is a website that they set up for the mission that will tell you what time of the day to go outside that will replicate the amount of sun that Pluto gets.
You can feel like you get the amount of light that Pluto is standing in Pluto at your house, maybe around twilight. You put in where you are and they tell you what time of night to stand out, so Pluto time. The other audacious thing they are going to try to do, you saw at the beginning of the presentation, New Horizons flies behind Pluto and into darkness, Pluto’s shadow.
While it’s there, it’s going to attempt to take a picture of the dark side of Pluto using the light bouncing off of Charon. They are going to use Charon shine, moon shine, to image that. That’s way fainter. That, they don’t know how it’s going to turn out. That’s the only chance of our lifetime to see the dark side of Pluto because it’s shrouded in darkness. It’s a big problem they face.
>> Thank you so much.
(Regina) Thank you for the question.
[Applause.]
(Jordan) This looks like a familiar face.
>> My names Jake, long time listener, first time caller.
(Regina) We talk about Jake on this show a lot. Why? I don’t know. I’ll let Jordan answer that. Why?
(Jordan) He’s my childhood friend also. He happened to marry Gina.
(Regina) So that’s my husband up there.
[Laughing.]
(Jake) So maybe, I don’t know if this is going to start an argument, but I’m wondering, this particular New Horizons mission, what’s the price tag on the mission? How does it compare to other missions? And, amongst the scientists, is this how you would allocate this money or is there a different mission you would like to see the money be used on?
(Regina) Oh.
(Jordan) They’re lacing up their gloves.
(Mike) I can address the cost and how that fits into NASA. New Horizons up to this point has cost about $630,000,000. That’s roughly $2 per American. That falls within, NASA breaks up its missions for robots to small, medium, and large. This is a medium class mission. The large missions can be about 2 billion and the small ones are about 450 million. The medium class ones they try to do every five years or so.
They open it up to a limited style of competition. They have this whole process that goes with the national academies of the United States. It’s called the decadal survey because it happens every ten years. The scientific community battles it out, arguing about what are the priorities for planetary exploration. They come out with this report after two years. NASA tries to follow it, congress tries to follow it. It’s a good way to try and work it out.
(Regina) Can I add to that decadal survey real quick? Casey does advocacy for a planetary society, which you have already said, but that means going to Washington DC and basically being a lobbyist and talking about this decadal survey. I did the same thing for AAS which is the American Astrological Society. This decadal survey is huge. We decide on which missions get what money. Or what we would like.
(Casey) It sets up priorities so the scientists don’t turn into a circle of firing squads and turn on themselves. However, saying that, you can let them argue amongst themselves and see if anyone differs from that. Let me add one more thing. Pluto, New Horizons was listed as the top medium class mission candidate in the decadal survey in the previous decide. That actually was one of the key moments that helped this mission survive conciliation. It became clear that the scientific community had a broad sense of how important this mission is. That plays a very important role.
(Regina) But not the sail boat one.
(Casey) The sale boat one was actually a small mission. For those, they’re open wide. Anyone can put up a pot of money every three of four years and say, “the scientist with the best idea and the best engineering likelihood of success put into proposal, we’ll review it and we’ll select who we think is the best one.” That one actually can be totally open. It’s never clear.
This last round they’re going to choose the next one next month. I’m sure you’re all waiting on the space policy world with me to see what the next discovery [inedible] will be. They submitted 28 and will choose 3 for further study and then down to one. It’s survivor for space craft.
(Regina) How do the planetary geologists feel about this mission and other missions they would have liked?
(Melissa) I don’t think anyone is going to come out of what we experienced in this room today saying that this was not a worthwhile use of our funds. I think that, as Casey so eloquently introduced at the beginning of the event, this is a once in a life time experience for us to see for the first time, well, for those of us born post Voyager, to see new worlds reveal themselves for the very first time.
There’s really not going to be another chance in our lifetimes to see something like this unless we get another spacecraft maybe to the, what’s now known as the second largest dwarf planet Eris. I would say, absolutely, I’m a hard core Martian. I would gladly turn away another medium class Mars mission in order to have this happen. No regrets form me.
(Mike) For me I would say this is a no brainer. If you thought about it like you had a bunch of friends and a good close family you knew, you knew all of their kids accept for one or two or something, it’s like, “I don’t really want to meet them, I’ll just take somebody on vacation and hang out with their other kids that we do know.” This is going into the great unknown basically.
(Regina) There are people that would pick that other scenario.
(Mike) That’s probably true. I’m a Martian as well. That’s my personal priority. This comes back again to the opportunity that we have as well. This was the time to do this mission. You don’t let that pass you by especially when we are looking at something that we just don’t know anything about.
(Regina) Right.
(Mike) It could have cost double and I would have still supported it.
(Regina) What do you think Kerstin?
(Kerstin) I agree. I think this is a great mission and I think it’s important to keep exploring the new places that we haven’t before. It’s always a balance between going back to places you know and digging in deeper and exploring new places. I think this is a prime example of exploring some new places that were in need of exploring. They’re there and we hadn’t seen them yet.
(Regina) I think that’s awesome. We have one more question. Thank you Jake, where did he go?
I’m going to clap for him.
[Applause.]
It’s the only time I clap for my husband.
>> Hi my name is Michael, I have a quick question. We discovered as we were flying closer to Pluto that it was described as a mini solar system, there were so many satellites flying around Pluto besides the Pluto sharing system. Can we expect any data or any images of the other smaller bodies from this mission?
(Regina) I want to add, Michael works for Melissa. He is a research student for Melissa.
(Melissa) I did not pay him to ask a question.
[Laughing.]
(Regina) No.
(Casey) So the answer is yes for three of them. Remember they just discovered the fourth and fifth moons while New Horizons was already on it’s way. By that point, the mission was set up that they couldn’t plan and they didn’t have the right equipment to even image them. They will, Hydra and Styx, I believe, will remain points of light. The other three will be imaged at various degrees of detail. Charon being the one that is getting the most attention because it is essentially the other planet on the pioneering system. We have already seen images of that. I’m going to black on the other moon’s names.
(Kerstin) Styx.
(Casey) Styx and Kerberos.
(Kerstin) You know that because the band Styx was introduced to the Moon by the New Horizons team I think.
(Regina) Oh!
(Casey) Those will get pictures and those will get some science done on them. They were worried about running into a new moon. Actually, I’ve heard that the biggest surprise on the mission is that they have not discovered a new moon yet. So maybe they will.
(Mike) It will be more to discovering the future.
(Casey) Yeah, exactly, they’ll have to send another mission to orbit. [Laughing.]
(Regina) I think we’re going to stop it there. I want to have one last slide. I want to thank you guys all for coming here. It was a great show. Here’s a great joke, Jordan I’m going to let you tell it.
(Jordan) How do you organize a space party? You planet.
(Regina) And with that, thank you for coming.
[Applause.]
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe♪]
♪ don’t believe me just watch
♪ don’t believe me just watch
♪ don’t believe me just watch
♪ don’t believe me just watch
(Regina) If you missed any of the show you can go to our website, KMRE.org and click on the podcast link. This is Spark Science. I’m Regina Barber DeGraaff.
(Jordan) And I’m Jordan Baker. We’ll be back again next week.
(Regina) Listen to us Sunday at 5pm, Wednesday at 9pm, and Saturday at noon.
(Jordan) If there’s a science idea that you’re curious about, send us an email or message us on our Facebook page @sparkscience.
(Regina) If you liked out show and would like to help out, go to KMRE.org and go to “donate.”
(Jordan) Today’s episode was produced in the KMRE Spark Radio studio located in the Spark Museum on Bay Street in Bellingham. Our producer is Suzanne Blaze and engineer is Eric Faburrietta. Our theme music was Chemical Calisthenics by Blackalicious and Wondaland by Janelle Monea.
>> It’s an exciting time to be a science fan.
[♪A Capella singing Pluto Mars: Outbound Probe ♪]
♪ Say what?
>> Here we go
[♪ Blackalicious rapping Chemical Calisthenics ♪]
♪ Neutron, proton, mass defect, lyrical oxidation, yo irrelevant
♪ Mass spectrograph, pure electron volt, atomic energy erupting
♪ As I get all open on betatron, gamma rays thermo cracking
♪ Cyclotron and any and every mic
♪ You’re on trans iridium, if you’re always uranium
♪ Molecules, spontaneous combustion, pow
♪ Law of de-fi-nite pro-por-tion, gain-ing weight
♪ I’m every element around
♪ Lead, gold, tin, iron, platinum, zinc, when I rap you think
♪ Iodine nitrate activate
♪ Red geranium, the only difference is I transmit sound
♪ Balance was unbalanced then you add a little talent in
♪ Careful, careful with those ingredients
♪ They could explode and blow up if you drop them
♪ And they hit the ground