Speaker 1: Hey, Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and it's Saturday.
Speaker 1: Time to go into the vault for an older episode
Speaker 1: of the show. This one originally published on December thirty one,
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen, and this was our interview with David Grinspoon
Speaker 1: on the planet Pluto. Wait, the planet Pluto. He would
Speaker 1: say planet other people would not, right, right, Yeah, we
Speaker 1: get into that a bit in this, uh, this discussion.
Speaker 1: It's really a great interview episode. Um, Dr Funky Spoon.
Speaker 1: It was a real pleasure to chat with very passionate
Speaker 1: about about Pluto. Uh, Pluto exploration, as as well as
Speaker 1: with other planets that we discuss a bit in this episode.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
Speaker 1: I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
Speaker 1: I'm Joe McCormick. In today we're bringing you an interview
Speaker 1: with Dr David Grinspoon. That's right. Uh. Dr David Grinspoon
Speaker 1: is an astrobiologist, award winning science communicator, and prize winning author,
Speaker 1: and is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute UM. Yes,
Speaker 1: and he is the co author, along with Dr Alan Stern,
Speaker 1: principal investigator of the New Horizons Mission. They're the authors
Speaker 1: of Chasing New Horizons Inside the Ethic First Mission to Pluto.
Speaker 1: This was a really fun conversation. I'm really glad we've
Speaker 1: got to talk to David about Pluto, about space exploration,
Speaker 1: about planets in general. And I think you are going
Speaker 1: to love this conversation. That's right, even if you're not
Speaker 1: that into Pluto, or you think you're not that into Pluto.
Speaker 1: There's also some Venus talk in there, so it's it's tremendous.
Speaker 1: Definitely check it out. We're just going to dive right
Speaker 1: into the interview and meet you on the other end.
Speaker 1: All right, well, thanks for coming on the show on
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow your Mind. Would you please introduce yourself
Speaker 1: to our listeners. And my name is David in Spoon.
Speaker 1: I'm an astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute UM AND
Speaker 1: I study planetary evolution and I get involved in some
Speaker 1: spacecraft missions to other planets and I've I've written a
Speaker 1: few books, most recently Chasing New Horizons Inside the Epic
Speaker 1: First Mission to Puto, which I co authored with Alan Stern,
Speaker 1: who was the h himself, the leader of the epic
Speaker 1: first mission to puta awesome I just want to stress
Speaker 1: to everyone listening this is a great book and if
Speaker 1: anyone is scared off from it, thinking, oh, I don't
Speaker 1: want to read about space probes and a far flung
Speaker 1: dwarf planet, I just want to reassure them that this
Speaker 1: is not only a very insightful book, it's it really
Speaker 1: has a it really is a narrative of the adventure
Speaker 1: in many respects. So I wanted to ask, how did
Speaker 1: how did you come to write, uh, to come to
Speaker 1: co author what some have called a nonfiction Michael Crichton novel.
Speaker 1: Well I like that, um like that description. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: this story, the story of New Horizons and of the
Speaker 1: exploration of Pluto, is one that I've been following closely
Speaker 1: for a long time. Uh much longer actually than there
Speaker 1: was a mission called New Horizons. There was an effort
Speaker 1: to send a mission to Pluto, and it just so
Speaker 1: happened that being a planetary scientists and coming up through
Speaker 1: you know, grad school and and all that, at a
Speaker 1: certain time that a lot of the people that I'm
Speaker 1: close with and friends with UM and have known for
Speaker 1: a long time, have been caught up, uh and became
Speaker 1: part of this this effort. So this was a struggle
Speaker 1: that people were going through who I knew well for
Speaker 1: for decades, and at times it seemed like a very
Speaker 1: quixotic journey, like there's no way this is going to happen.
Speaker 1: I can't believe what these guys are going through. I
Speaker 1: can't believe they're not giving up. And and I remember
Speaker 1: we're thinking, you know, well over a decade ago, probably
Speaker 1: a couple of decades ago. Wow, you know, if these
Speaker 1: guys ever actually succeed in doing this, it's gonna be
Speaker 1: a great story. It's gonna make a great book someday.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a great book anyways, because of what
Speaker 1: these guys are going through. But if they actually succeed,
Speaker 1: it's gonna be an amazing book. I remember thinking that UM,
Speaker 1: and then more recently in UM I guess two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen, when New Horizons was actually approaching Pluto, finally
Speaker 1: Alan Stern, who I've known for a long time, approached
Speaker 1: me and said, hey, I'm thinking of I want to
Speaker 1: write a book about New Horizons, and uh, I want
Speaker 1: to do it. With with a co author, and and
Speaker 1: you're my first choice, and um, I was, I was
Speaker 1: really psyched. I mean, you know, when you get an
Speaker 1: offer like that, what's the right answer? You know, yes,
Speaker 1: of course. And so so we agreed to enter into
Speaker 1: a partnership and and try to tell the story. Um
Speaker 1: and um. You know that had that had its own
Speaker 1: kinds of challenges because obviously Alan's relationship to the story
Speaker 1: is very different from mine. And how are we gonna
Speaker 1: sort of combine our two perspectives and uh and tell
Speaker 1: tell the story where he you know, he's a character
Speaker 1: in the book. Um, and it's it's his mission. But
Speaker 1: we we worked really hard on that and thought about
Speaker 1: how we could use that as a strength or that,
Speaker 1: you know, the kind of combination of our two perspectives,
Speaker 1: and I, uh, it was. It was tricky, but I
Speaker 1: think I think we succeeded in producing a book that
Speaker 1: not only tells a pretty exciting story, but does it
Speaker 1: in a unique way. Absolutely. You know, at time treating
Speaker 1: this book, I kept coming back to a question that
Speaker 1: I guess may may sound a little cheeky, but but
Speaker 1: also probably gets to some of the challenges of the
Speaker 1: space exploration. Whether it's harder to send a spacecraft to
Speaker 1: Pluto or to successfully push a mess mission proposal through NASA.
Speaker 1: And I want to come back to that, you know,
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on that, but but I thought it
Speaker 1: might be nice to touch on that, that first challenge
Speaker 1: and uh, you know the amazing methods that we use
Speaker 1: to send spacecraft through the Solar System. Would you tell
Speaker 1: our listeners about our early dreams of a Grand Tour
Speaker 1: and the time frame for capitalizing on what you describe
Speaker 1: is excellently described in the book, is a kind of stargate? Yeah, well, um,
Speaker 1: I love the first part of your question, so we
Speaker 1: definitely need to get back to that, because yes, it's
Speaker 1: there's some ways in which it's harder to navigate h Washington,
Speaker 1: d C. Than than Um, than the outer Solar System.
Speaker 1: I don't know. Both those have their own challenges and
Speaker 1: you have to learn how to be good at both
Speaker 1: if you want to do this. But um, the Grand Tour,
Speaker 1: M Yeah, so well, it's it's very difficult to send
Speaker 1: the spacecraft as far as Pluto. Um. And if you
Speaker 1: were just going to launch from Earth with a normal
Speaker 1: rocket and just try to head out there, it would
Speaker 1: take um, well, much longer than the New Horizons took.
Speaker 1: You know, when New Horizon basically took only a decade
Speaker 1: to cross the Solar System, it would take longer because
Speaker 1: the distances are so great. But um, you can take
Speaker 1: advantage of something called a gravitational assist where you fly
Speaker 1: in close to a giant planet with a huge gravitational
Speaker 1: pull and if you aim in just the right way, um,
Speaker 1: then you use the gravity, the giant gravitational pool of
Speaker 1: that giant planet to sort of sling shot you around.
Speaker 1: You know, it pulls you in, but you missed the
Speaker 1: planet and then it flings you out and you have
Speaker 1: to aim just right. But you can use that to
Speaker 1: get a boost, a big pick up and speed, which
Speaker 1: makes it much quicker to execute the rest of your
Speaker 1: journey across the Solar System. If you've if you've done
Speaker 1: everything right. And the first time this was really used
Speaker 1: to dramatic effect was the Voyager mission. The Voyager missions
Speaker 1: which we're you know, our first close by buys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,
Speaker 1: and Neptune voyagers. They launched in seventy seven. The Neptune
Speaker 1: encounter of Voyager two was which was the last one
Speaker 1: was nine so all through the late seventies and in
Speaker 1: the eighties, these missions were going planet to planet and
Speaker 1: sort of expanding our our knowledge of our Solar System
Speaker 1: and dramatic encounters. And there's a certain element of luck
Speaker 1: there that a lot of people really aren't probably aware of.
Speaker 1: But if you look historically, I mean, you know, we
Speaker 1: started sending spacecraft to other planets in the sixties, and
Speaker 1: you know, the Venus Mars in the sixties, and then
Speaker 1: um started thinking about farther going farther afield. And it
Speaker 1: just so happens that occasionally there's a lineup of all
Speaker 1: the planets in just the right way, so that if
Speaker 1: you launch at the right time, you can sling shot
Speaker 1: past Jupiter and then that sends you to Saturn, and
Speaker 1: then you sling shot past Saturn and that sends you
Speaker 1: to your earnest and then to Neptune and then to Pluto,
Speaker 1: et cetera. UM. And but you have to picture the
Speaker 1: planets have to be lined up just right, sort of
Speaker 1: like beads on a spiral going out from the Sun,
Speaker 1: and that alignment only happens every couple hundred years. And
Speaker 1: the amazing historical luck that I that I was mentioning
Speaker 1: that people aren't aware of is that in the late
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies, scientists became aware, you know,
Speaker 1: just when we were gaining the ability to launch spacecraft
Speaker 1: off of birth and going to the planets for the
Speaker 1: first time, scientists became aware that one of these what
Speaker 1: they call Grand Tour alignments was coming up in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen seventies and eighties, so that if you launched
Speaker 1: a spacecraft by the mid to late nineteen seventies from Earth,
Speaker 1: you could do this Grand tour and go all the
Speaker 1: way out to the earnest Neptune Pluto. But if you
Speaker 1: missed that window, that nineteen seventies window, you wouldn't get
Speaker 1: another chance like this for a couple of hundred years.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's started just in the nick of time.
Speaker 1: But it was also a rush to launch because this.
Speaker 1: People realize this, and the scientists proposed a grand tour
Speaker 1: in the early seventies, and then Congress said, no, that's
Speaker 1: too expensive, go back to the drawing board, and they
Speaker 1: were like, well, we don't have much time to get
Speaker 1: this together. You know. There was some drama there, but
Speaker 1: they reproposed and Voyager got approved and the Grand Tour
Speaker 1: mission became the Voyager mission, which culminated in uh in
Speaker 1: the encounter, the amazing encounter with Neptune and it's moon
Speaker 1: Triton in with Voyager two, and as we tell in
Speaker 1: the book Chasing New Horizons, in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: of that encounter set the stage for the desire to
Speaker 1: go to Pluto, because with Neptune, uh you know, it
Speaker 1: was sort of all over for that generation, and people,
Speaker 1: young scientists were like, well, wait a minute, there's more
Speaker 1: to explore. What are we going to do? And Triton,
Speaker 1: which was the last place the Voyager went, little moon
Speaker 1: of Neptune is is a very sort of Puto like place,
Speaker 1: a really strange, icy world with solid nitrogen basins and
Speaker 1: all this strange activity and geography, and it made people think, gosh,
Speaker 1: if we could only send a mission to Pluto. And
Speaker 1: right sort of in the wake of the end of
Speaker 1: the Voyager mission, at least the Voyager Planetary Encounters was
Speaker 1: born the desire, uh you know, it really in nine
Speaker 1: for this this crazy idea of sending a mission to Pluto,
Speaker 1: which culminated, uh, you know, twenty six years later with
Speaker 1: a successful fly by of Pluto. By New Horizons in
Speaker 1: two fifteen. Now you were talking about gravity assist there,
Speaker 1: and and of course the what ultimately became New Horizons,
Speaker 1: the New Horizons mission, and went through you discussed all
Speaker 1: the different sort of versions of the proposal. At one
Speaker 1: point the proposal was actually actually involved sending a craft
Speaker 1: towards the Sun first, right. Oh, yeah, that was one
Speaker 1: trajectory that would have worked, um as far as using
Speaker 1: these gravitational encounters to get to Pluto. But it would
Speaker 1: have involved going towards the Sun and flying by Venus
Speaker 1: first and then back by Earth. And which is, by
Speaker 1: the way, something that is um done. Uh. You know,
Speaker 1: that's actually how both both Galileo and Cassini on their
Speaker 1: way to Jupiter and Saturn both did venus fly bys. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you go in and pick up speed and then
Speaker 1: you fling back outwards. But it was really not optimal
Speaker 1: for a small Pluto mission, and it was it would
Speaker 1: have worked, but it would have taken more years um.
Speaker 1: And it already takes a long time to get out
Speaker 1: to Pluto. Um. And also UM, I mean it would
Speaker 1: have saved energy and money, and that's the other thing.
Speaker 1: You're not just doing this to save time. On the journey.
Speaker 1: You you want to launched a smaller rocket and still
Speaker 1: have enough energy to get to the Outer Solar System,
Speaker 1: and that's where these encounters help you also by kicking
Speaker 1: up speed. So it would have worked. But you also
Speaker 1: it's not optimal because when you're designing something to endure
Speaker 1: the coldness of the outer Outer Solar System where Pluto is,
Speaker 1: you really don't want to send that spacecraft in towards
Speaker 1: the Sun and endure the thermal environment near Venus if
Speaker 1: you can help it. So it was one of the
Speaker 1: things that came onto the table to possibly save the
Speaker 1: Pluto mission, which had to be done multiple times when
Speaker 1: things got canceled and the budget got constricted or whatever,
Speaker 1: but it turned out to not really be the best
Speaker 1: way to do it. Yeah, you lay out, you know,
Speaker 1: all the close calls that just the uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the the quest to send a craft to Pluto went through.
Speaker 1: How many close calls were there, and how astounding is
Speaker 1: it that the mission happened at all. It really is
Speaker 1: kind of a pails of Pauline story, you know, where
Speaker 1: everything that can go wrong almost did go wrong. Um,
Speaker 1: and you know that's that's part of part of why
Speaker 1: I love the story because we wanted to let people
Speaker 1: know not just what happened and how it was done,
Speaker 1: but really what it takes to get something through the
Speaker 1: system and all the different things that can derail it.
Speaker 1: And this story kind of combines all of those hazards it. Uh,
Speaker 1: it had to be UM. It was canceled by two
Speaker 1: different successive presidential administrations UM. And that you know, one
Speaker 1: of the risk of these things is the time scale
Speaker 1: is long enough that you get it through and the
Speaker 1: government finally says, yeah, we're gonna fund this, we like it,
Speaker 1: and then you get a new government and that wasn't
Speaker 1: our idea. Forget it. And this happened multiple times UM.
Speaker 1: And then you know, they sort of kept changing the
Speaker 1: rules on new horizons and then there you know, there's
Speaker 1: so many interesting crises. One was had to do with
Speaker 1: the nuclear power that you have to have a nuclear
Speaker 1: power source when you're going that far from the sun UM,
Speaker 1: and that introduces other UM hazards. I mean, just just
Speaker 1: in terms of the regulation. Uh, it's crazy getting something
Speaker 1: like that approved, especially when you've got a ticking clock
Speaker 1: and you have to launch by a certain date or
Speaker 1: you're gonna miss your Jupiter fly by window and so
Speaker 1: that was tricky. And then all these things happened. Last
Speaker 1: last Albumos Lab, which is the only place where they
Speaker 1: make the plutonium, got shut down because of a security breach,
Speaker 1: um and uh, they weren't gonna have enough time to
Speaker 1: get enough plutonium. And you know, so that's one whole
Speaker 1: area of of intrigue. And and you know, near mishap
Speaker 1: and then you know, there were there were a couple
Speaker 1: of just unfortunate technical accidents. There were um, you know,
Speaker 1: there was a lot of kind of like political um uh,
Speaker 1: just maschinations within NASA and outside of NASHA that outside
Speaker 1: of NASA that doomed seemingly doomed to the mission again
Speaker 1: and again and and and this team, this crazy team
Speaker 1: of you know, they called themselves the Pluto Underground, that
Speaker 1: were committed to this goal. They kept having to pick
Speaker 1: themselves up and dust themselves off and basically start again.
Speaker 1: And um it's really it's really an amazing story of
Speaker 1: perseverance that they just didn't let it go. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean not only the you discussed, not only like the
Speaker 1: technological hurdles and then of course the political sphere, but
Speaker 1: but even just within the realm of space exploration. Like suddenly,
Speaker 1: given that that grand times span for the for the project, Uh,
Speaker 1: new new things become exciting just within the realm of
Speaker 1: space exploration that can potentially detract from a mission like this, right, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: So you know there's something that something comes along. You know,
Speaker 1: again we're talking to an effort that started really succeeded
Speaker 1: in two fifteen, and you know it's a shifting landscape.
Speaker 1: New discoveries happen, UM, new constituencies form with a NASA
Speaker 1: to do do other kinds of missions. I mean, for instance,
Speaker 1: one thing that that came along UM during this time
Speaker 1: period was that Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, got
Speaker 1: much more interesting in the in the sense that we
Speaker 1: discovered um with the Galletle mission, we discovered that Europa
Speaker 1: likely has an ocean and is a possible habitable environment.
Speaker 1: So um, the Pluto mission is doing well, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, there's this huge movement within the
Speaker 1: planetary science community to divert resources and compete a mission
Speaker 1: to Europa instead because of these discoveries, and and you know,
Speaker 1: nobody on the New Horizons team is going to argue, well,
Speaker 1: Europe is not interesting and not important. I wouldn't argue
Speaker 1: that that for a second. Everybody, you know, we all
Speaker 1: acknowledge that these are all important goals, but there's the
Speaker 1: shiny new thing all of a sudden, you know, late
Speaker 1: a minute. We've been waiting our turn, you know, so
Speaker 1: that things things like that happened multiple times. I actually
Speaker 1: have heard of like a planetary partisanship before. You know,
Speaker 1: I had a friend who did some research on Jupiter's
Speaker 1: moon Io and she had some kind of negative things
Speaker 1: to say about Europa. Well, okay, I mean there is
Speaker 1: there is definitely an element of that. And in a way,
Speaker 1: then the way NASA sets up it's UM, it's competition
Speaker 1: for missions, UM kind of encourages that because there are
Speaker 1: these different UM interest groups within NASA. There's like, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested in Venus exploration, so I'm part of
Speaker 1: this group called VEX at the Venus Exploration Activities Group,
Speaker 1: And there's me PAD, which is the Mars Exploration Activities Group,
Speaker 1: and then there's the Outer Planets Activities Group. And you
Speaker 1: know when we when NASA does their annual h decadal
Speaker 1: ranking of mission priorities, were sort of organized into these
Speaker 1: different constituencies and we're all putting our favorite mission forward.
Speaker 1: So there is this competition, um, and then even beyond that,
Speaker 1: when there's a call for new missions, you know there's
Speaker 1: going to be a small or medium class or large
Speaker 1: class mission. Different teams compete, you know, And I've been
Speaker 1: on these teams, and you put years into these missions,
Speaker 1: and you compete really hard. So of course you want
Speaker 1: your mission. I mean, I want my Venus mission that
Speaker 1: I'm a co investigator on to be selected. And then
Speaker 1: when an asteroid mission or a Jupiter mission or something
Speaker 1: gets selected instead, I'm really bummed about that same time.
Speaker 1: So that's true, and that's partly just a measure of
Speaker 1: the way we compete things. But I do have to say,
Speaker 1: and I and this is really true, that there's a
Speaker 1: larger sense in which we're all on the same team
Speaker 1: and feel that way. So that when the competition is
Speaker 1: over and one of these missions comes to the launch pad,
Speaker 1: whether it's a Mars mission and asteroid mission, uh whatever,
Speaker 1: everybody in the community cheers that launch. I mean, because
Speaker 1: we all, you know, when you back up from that,
Speaker 1: we're all pretty psyched about exploring the whole Solar System.
Speaker 1: And even though you'll hear me and some of my
Speaker 1: colleagues grumble about, oh my got another Mars mission got funded,
Speaker 1: what about Venus? What about you know? But then then
Speaker 1: when that Mars mission actually launches and lands successfully, we
Speaker 1: get tears in our eyes too, and we're like, this
Speaker 1: is so amazing. So you know, we yeah, we compete
Speaker 1: for our separate constituencies, but we all I think also
Speaker 1: genuinely u root for and identify with the larger project
Speaker 1: of exploring the sol war system. Yeah, I want to
Speaker 1: be clear in case my friend is listening. She I
Speaker 1: think she was joking when she was slagging. Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: we do talk about it, you know, every scheme and
Speaker 1: like market I hope people, you know, But at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, we're I mean, and you know,
Speaker 1: of course you get personal um grudges and all. You know,
Speaker 1: human human beings are human beings. But at the end
Speaker 1: of the day, uh, we're all pretty excited about about
Speaker 1: all of the exploration. All right, we're gonna jump in
Speaker 1: here and take a quick break, but we'll be right back,
Speaker 1: and we're back. I found it really astounding, especially to
Speaker 1: think about this as we were at the very close
Speaker 1: of the decade, as we're recording this, but at one point,
Speaker 1: I think during two thousand you mentioned that NASA just
Speaker 1: shelved the idea of a Pluto mission altogether until the twenties.
Speaker 1: So I think it's it's amazing to think that there's
Speaker 1: like an alternate timeline out there in which you and
Speaker 1: Alan might have written a book about the desire for
Speaker 1: a Pluto mission in the twenties rather than what we
Speaker 1: have a definitive history of the planet's first exploration. That's right.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many alternate timelines like that, And
Speaker 1: this was a case where basically, um, you know, more
Speaker 1: than once NASA let it, you know, got to the
Speaker 1: stage where there's going to be a competition for this mission,
Speaker 1: which is a huge win for the people wanting to
Speaker 1: go to Puto. It's like NASA sponsoring a competition for proposals.
Speaker 1: That means that they're gonna pick a winning proposal and
Speaker 1: then somebody gets to fly mission to Pluto and hopefully
Speaker 1: it's our team, but at least it's some team, so
Speaker 1: that's great. But then they have this competition and everybody
Speaker 1: works really really hard on all their proposals, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's this crazy amount of effort to get this in
Speaker 1: and then NASA says at the end of it, well,
Speaker 1: actually we're not picking anybody, and um, the whole concept
Speaker 1: is is canceled um because a budget problems. And by
Speaker 1: the way, we're just not going to go to Pluto
Speaker 1: for the next twenty years. So that was actually something
Speaker 1: that was declared by the Associate Administrator of NASA at
Speaker 1: one point, and that was really a low point for
Speaker 1: the morale, as you can imagine. But there were interesting
Speaker 1: things that happened, um at that point. Um, there was
Speaker 1: a big public interest campaign. There was the Planetary Society
Speaker 1: got involved. There are a group that advocates a public
Speaker 1: membership group that advocates for planetary exploration and other um.
Speaker 1: You know, the public got involved and there was a
Speaker 1: lot of pressed about this and people were like demanding, no,
Speaker 1: we want our government, we want NASA to send a
Speaker 1: mission to Pluto. And then NASA got tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of letters saying you can't cancel Pluto, we want this.
Speaker 1: And so there were points and that that point you
Speaker 1: mentioned where it was completely canceled was one in particular
Speaker 1: where the public input became really key to keeping the
Speaker 1: effort going. UM. And you know, of course there were
Speaker 1: efforts by the Pudo underground to sort of help marshal
Speaker 1: that public interest and encourage letter writing. But at the
Speaker 1: same time it was really genuine. There was there was
Speaker 1: indeed an outpouring of mass public support. And UM. That's
Speaker 1: another thing that's interesting I think about the whole story.
Speaker 1: Was it at the heart of it, there's this band
Speaker 1: of sort of I guess I don't want to quite
Speaker 1: call them fanatics but almost but like you know, really
Speaker 1: determined UM scientists, UM, who wanted to do this UM.
Speaker 1: But then UM there's also the larger planetary scientists community
Speaker 1: that had to be sort of won over to their cause.
Speaker 1: And then and then outside of that, there's just the
Speaker 1: public that got very involved and at times, UM, the
Speaker 1: support of the public was pivotal in UM keeping the
Speaker 1: effort going and ultimately and ensuring a success. So we
Speaker 1: know you have a special place in your heart for Venus,
Speaker 1: and maybe we can come back to that later on.
Speaker 1: But what is so captivating in particular about Pluto. Well, Pluto,
Speaker 1: of course, you know, historically it's been the place that
Speaker 1: we just didn't know anything about, UM and uh so
Speaker 1: it was you know, in science fiction from the golden
Speaker 1: age of science fiction in the you know, sixties, seventies, eighties,
Speaker 1: when we really didn't know anything about Pluto. It's this um,
Speaker 1: this kind of mystery world um, and there's a lot
Speaker 1: of great law laura about Pluto. But then, of course, scientifically,
Speaker 1: once we started to learn about the existence of the
Speaker 1: Cooper Belt, which is this whole third realm of the
Speaker 1: Solar System. You know, you've got the inner rocky planets,
Speaker 1: the outer gas giants, and then the outer outer Coiper Belt,
Speaker 1: which is this vast zone of these icy and rocky objects,
Speaker 1: you know, millions of them beyond the orbit of Neptune
Speaker 1: that we didn't even know about. All we knew about
Speaker 1: was Pluto. It turned out, we discovered really in the
Speaker 1: in the ninety nineties that Pluto is the tip of
Speaker 1: the iceberg of this huge unknown realm of the Solar System.
Speaker 1: And so that in itself made it very interesting to
Speaker 1: want to go and visit one of these bodies, because
Speaker 1: those are leftovers from the formation of the Solar System.
Speaker 1: You know, they're sort of leftover building pile of building
Speaker 1: materials that made the planets. So we know there's answers
Speaker 1: out there too, questions of our own origins, but then,
Speaker 1: you know, there was always the possibility, certainly in my mind,
Speaker 1: and I know in the mind of some of the
Speaker 1: other um, some of the people involved in the mission,
Speaker 1: that well, what if, against all odds, this thing actually
Speaker 1: works and we get to Pluto, And then what if
Speaker 1: it's kind of boring. It's be cool to get there,
Speaker 1: no matter what, but what if it's just kind of
Speaker 1: like a a crater ice ball um. You know, you
Speaker 1: could learn some things, you count the creators, you measured
Speaker 1: with the serviceman out of it. You know, it would
Speaker 1: it would no matter what, it would be cool. But
Speaker 1: but in the back of my mind it was like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, what if it's just not the most exciting place.
Speaker 1: And it seemed plausible because we have this sort of
Speaker 1: prejudice against um cold places that are far from other things.
Speaker 1: We expect them to be inactive, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: in our textbooks, you know, we thought the moons of
Speaker 1: Jupiter would be boring and inactive, and it turns out
Speaker 1: there not because the gravitational pull of Jupiter makes them
Speaker 1: pulse with activity. We didn't know that until we got there.
Speaker 1: By the same token, a lot of people thought Pluto
Speaker 1: would be boring and inactive. And the thing that's if
Speaker 1: I had to summarize, you know, and a very short
Speaker 1: number of sentences, what's surprising and exciting about Pluto compared
Speaker 1: to our expectations is that it's really active. It's geologically alive.
Speaker 1: It's not old and dead and just covered with creators.
Speaker 1: It pulses with activity and that is something that nobody expected.
Speaker 1: And when those first pictures came in, um, you know,
Speaker 1: there was like, in addition to joy and elation and
Speaker 1: just share amazement by the the team members, there was
Speaker 1: also this puzzlement of what is going on there? Why
Speaker 1: is this place so far from the sun. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: it's not discovered in creators. There's clearly activity going on there.
Speaker 1: And at first it was you know, it really was
Speaker 1: you know, a massive head scratching moment to figure out, okay,
Speaker 1: what what's going on? And it it's just so varied
Speaker 1: and um active and complex in a surprising and delightful
Speaker 1: way that um, you know, I'm still kind of wrapping
Speaker 1: my head around that. Well, would you mind telling us
Speaker 1: a few like what are some of these most exciting
Speaker 1: and like the strangest revelations about this object? Yeah? What
Speaker 1: makes Pluto weird. So the first thing you notice, and
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of poetry in this, but it's true.
Speaker 1: You know, as you're approaching Pluto, even days away, you
Speaker 1: see this bright heart shaped feature the heart of Pluto,
Speaker 1: which is just kind of lovely, but it's also that
Speaker 1: turns out to be a very very intriguing and interesting formation.
Speaker 1: It's this massive, um, huge glacier of solid nitrogen um
Speaker 1: called Sputnik Poinecia. A lot of the places on Pluto
Speaker 1: have now been named after famous explorers or missions of exploration,
Speaker 1: and so we've got Tombao Reggio. The heart itself is
Speaker 1: named Tombaw Reggio, really, which is the after Clyde Tombau,
Speaker 1: the discover of Pluto. And then the big um western
Speaker 1: or left ventricle if you will have, the hard western
Speaker 1: smooth area is the Sputnik Plinicia, which is this massive
Speaker 1: glacier of flowing solid nitrogen. And that was the big
Speaker 1: you know. Okay, so you see this area, it's big,
Speaker 1: it's bright, and there are absolutely no craters on it.
Speaker 1: Zero And I remember John Spencer, who's you know, one
Speaker 1: of these old friends from grad school. I was mentioning,
Speaker 1: who's been involved in this mission for a long long time.
Speaker 1: Who's one of the UH you know, very central. He's
Speaker 1: in the book. He's one of the people that helped
Speaker 1: UH plan the mission, and UM did a lot of
Speaker 1: important work and a lot of the scientific analysis. I
Speaker 1: remember him saying on the day of the encounter, if
Speaker 1: you had told me that the first that I've ever
Speaker 1: told me that I'd see the first high resolution image
Speaker 1: of Pluto and it would have zero impact craters, no craters,
Speaker 1: I would not have believed you. And that's because craters
Speaker 1: are sort of our our chronometers. You know, when you
Speaker 1: see a planetary surface full of craters, you know it's
Speaker 1: an old surface that not much has happened to. It's
Speaker 1: just been collecting creators over the eons. And when you
Speaker 1: see a surface with no craters, then you say, Okay,
Speaker 1: something's happening here. There's more recent activities, something filling in
Speaker 1: the old holes and paving it over. And this was,
Speaker 1: you know, a massive area UM with with no craters.
Speaker 1: And it turns out UM that and we didn't know
Speaker 1: this UM, but we should have known it because there's
Speaker 1: no new physics involved. It was just lack of imagination
Speaker 1: or you know, this is why we explore because you
Speaker 1: discovered things and you go, oh, I should have thought
Speaker 1: of that, But but that that it turns out that
Speaker 1: solid nitrogen at plute temperatures is squishy enough so that
Speaker 1: you build up enough of it that it does flow
Speaker 1: over geologic time with a little bit of heat. And
Speaker 1: there's a little bit of heat coming from the interior
Speaker 1: of Puto, so um basically that activity is convicting and
Speaker 1: flowing solid nitrogen which covers this massive area on Puto.
Speaker 1: And then closer and you look, you see like things
Speaker 1: that are you realize there's glaciers of nitrogen flowing out
Speaker 1: of the steep mountains on the edge of this thing,
Speaker 1: and the mountains are made out of um water ice
Speaker 1: because water ice there has the properties of bedrock. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so cold. But if you actually look at those mountains,
Speaker 1: they have roughly the the height and shape of like
Speaker 1: the rocky mountains on Earth. You know, they're like fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand foot peaks of water ice with glaciers of solid
Speaker 1: nitrogen flowing out of them onto these nitrogen plans. So
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's a you can find forms that
Speaker 1: look familiar and yet you look at what they're made
Speaker 1: out of, and they're just really exotic materials. Isn't there
Speaker 1: also some amazing precipitation situation on Pluto. Yes, and again
Speaker 1: it's another one of these things where it's something that
Speaker 1: looks familiar, but it's weird stuff doing it. So on
Speaker 1: some of the high mountains, they're they're snow capped, but
Speaker 1: it's not snow the way we usually think of it.
Speaker 1: There are there's methane snow on top of some of these,
Speaker 1: so you have you know, it's it's the same things
Speaker 1: that you have on on Earth you have rock mountains
Speaker 1: and water ice glaciers and water ice snow. On Pluto
Speaker 1: you have uh, water ice mountains with nitrogen glaciers and
Speaker 1: methane snow. All right, So as long as we're talking
Speaker 1: about just the property to Pluto. I originally wasn't going
Speaker 1: to ask about this because I know you get it
Speaker 1: a lot um and but you also discussed it in
Speaker 1: the book. So my second grade son is studying the
Speaker 1: planets in school and he really wants you to weigh
Speaker 1: in on this is Pluto planet. So my one word
Speaker 1: answer is yes, But what I would tell your son
Speaker 1: because maybe he's confused by hearing that because he might
Speaker 1: have heard in school, but it's not. I would try
Speaker 1: to use it as a teachable moment and say, well,
Speaker 1: here's why some scientists think it's not, and here's why
Speaker 1: some scientists think it is. Because you know, to my mind,
Speaker 1: what makes something a planet or not UM has to
Speaker 1: do with its intrinsic properties. What's that object like, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, and and in my view, anything that's large
Speaker 1: enough to be round by its own gravity and have
Speaker 1: um the features that we associate with planets at you know,
Speaker 1: surface activity and mountains and atmosphere, which Pluto does, makes
Speaker 1: sense to call it a planet. Um the i AU
Speaker 1: definition which became very popular and which some people consider
Speaker 1: to be official, although though I don't UM, it's base
Speaker 1: more on not the properties of that object, but what's
Speaker 1: around it, how it's orbiting, and what's orbiting around it.
Speaker 1: And you know, if you're the kind of astronomer that
Speaker 1: doesn't think so much about what planets the properties of
Speaker 1: planets themselves, doesn't worry about geology and meteorology, but is
Speaker 1: interested in um looking through telescopes and identifying orbiting objects
Speaker 1: and thinking about classifying your orbits in different ways, then
Speaker 1: I can see how that sort of makes sense, um,
Speaker 1: but but it also at least leads to some sort
Speaker 1: of absurdities. I mean, the basic thing is they say
Speaker 1: that if a planet dominates its zone and has cleared
Speaker 1: out other material, then it's actually a planet, and if
Speaker 1: it hasn't, then it's something else called a dwarf planet,
Speaker 1: which isn't really a planet. Um is what is said.
Speaker 1: The problem is at least to some silly in my
Speaker 1: view of silly things like if you took Earth and
Speaker 1: moved it somewhere else where there was a swarm of material,
Speaker 1: then it wouldn't be a planet anymore, or even worse,
Speaker 1: even worse by that definition. Earth itself was not a
Speaker 1: planet for its first five million in years of existence,
Speaker 1: when it was being pelted with objects that you know,
Speaker 1: in its zone that had not yet been cleared out,
Speaker 1: and then it became a planet at some point, not
Speaker 1: because it changed, but because it's environment changed. So um,
Speaker 1: what you will find is that, um, there's a difference
Speaker 1: in the way planetary scientists speak about this from astronomers
Speaker 1: in general. And I'm a planetary scientist. I study planets
Speaker 1: for living and me and really most of my colleagues.
Speaker 1: I think we use the word planet when we talk
Speaker 1: about Pluto. We even use the word planet when we
Speaker 1: talk about um, the larger planet like moons like Io
Speaker 1: and Uh and Tighten, because because again they have the
Speaker 1: features that we are interested in thinking about and comparing
Speaker 1: between worlds. So UM, I guess you could tell your
Speaker 1: son going back to that, that some scientists UM that
Speaker 1: a lot of the scientists who study planets use the
Speaker 1: word planet when talk about Puto because it has these things.
Speaker 1: And then and then tell them about Puda instead of
Speaker 1: worrying about the the definition, say, because it has mountains,
Speaker 1: and it has an atmosphere, and it's big and round
Speaker 1: because of gravity. And you know, hopefully when you talk
Speaker 1: to kids, you steer the conversation into something more interesting
Speaker 1: than scientists arguing about nomenclature and actually talk about what's
Speaker 1: cool about Puda. You know, absolutely now speaking of nomenclature, uh.
Speaker 1: You also at one point in the book you talk
Speaker 1: about the you know, the naming of the planet and
Speaker 1: some of the you list some of the potential names
Speaker 1: that were thrown out there at one point. So you know,
Speaker 1: if we're considering alternative history, there's also an alternative timeline
Speaker 1: where we're not talking about the exploration of Pluto, we're
Speaker 1: talking about the exploration of Tomboy, which was one of
Speaker 1: my favorites from that list you share. Yeah, now that was.
Speaker 1: I mean, so the discovery of Pluto in itself is
Speaker 1: a really just cool story which we try to encapsulate
Speaker 1: in the book because Tombo himself was a really interesting character. Nately,
Speaker 1: So again another kind of against all odds, perseverance wins
Speaker 1: the day kind of story which is echoed, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: seventy years or eighty years later in the story of
Speaker 1: the success of of New Horizons. But when um, the
Speaker 1: planet was discovered at low observatory, Um, then um, you know,
Speaker 1: they of course they made sure not to tell anybody
Speaker 1: until they were absolutely They checked their work and we
Speaker 1: were absolutely certain they have found something. They didn't want
Speaker 1: to be accused of a false alarm. And but then
Speaker 1: once they were sure, they announced it to the world
Speaker 1: and it was in all the newspapers and everything. And
Speaker 1: then ideas came flooding in telegrams from from all over
Speaker 1: the world, um, uh, suggesting and letters suggesting names, um,
Speaker 1: and some of them are pretty funny. I mean, well,
Speaker 1: first of all, there was some there was some politics involved,
Speaker 1: like personal glowals who was the guy that you know
Speaker 1: found rich Bostonian astronomer who founded the Lobo Ervatory where
Speaker 1: it was um the search was successfully executed and who
Speaker 1: actually Um really he started the search but didn't live
Speaker 1: to see it through. His widow wanted to call it
Speaker 1: um Percy in honor of first Belowl, you know. And
Speaker 1: there were some some politics that had to be offended off.
Speaker 1: And then there were some very very silly UM suggestions
Speaker 1: that you mentioned tomboy, yeah, because somebody was like, well
Speaker 1: that sounds like Tombo, and uh, there's they've got a
Speaker 1: great collection of these, uh in at little observatory of
Speaker 1: the letters suggesting different names for Pluto. But the the
Speaker 1: actual name UM, I love This came from a m
Speaker 1: a ten year old English schoolgirl named Venetia Bernie who
Speaker 1: heard about the discovery of Pluto and UM mentioned that
Speaker 1: UM at the dinner table to her parents, who knew
Speaker 1: an astronomer. Um that she had been doing some reading
Speaker 1: and mythology and she suggested Pluto because of its underworld
Speaker 1: associations and it's you know, all the you know, the
Speaker 1: mythological associations and and this was sent by UM by
Speaker 1: by telegram UM and and they loved it at Little Observatory.
Speaker 1: And there's part of the reason is because the first
Speaker 1: two letters P l um is also honors personal Loal.
Speaker 1: And in fact, the symbol for Pluto, you know, all
Speaker 1: the all the planets have kind of a symbol that
Speaker 1: comes out of you know, mythology, mostly um. Like the
Speaker 1: Mars symbol is you know, the male um that the
Speaker 1: circle with the arrow coming out of it, and the
Speaker 1: Venus one is the circle with a cross coming out
Speaker 1: of it, etcetera. And the symbol that was adopted for
Speaker 1: Pluto has a P and an L which stands for Pluto,
Speaker 1: but it also stands for personal Lowal. So that way
Speaker 1: they were able to honor the you know, founder of
Speaker 1: the observatory without doing something so ass is to name
Speaker 1: it after him. Yeah, that's awesome. I love the history
Speaker 1: that you share there about that, because because you go
Speaker 1: through the the history of thinking about Pluto, you know,
Speaker 1: discovering Pluto and then leading up to this exploration. But
Speaker 1: of course at the very start of the book you
Speaker 1: you really really to drive home just how delicate these
Speaker 1: missions are and how high the stakes. Are you open
Speaker 1: with what could have been an extremely tragic moment for
Speaker 1: the spacecraft? Yeah, you know, we wanted to um structure
Speaker 1: it a little bit like a thriller because the people
Speaker 1: and for the people that lived through it, Um, it
Speaker 1: was like a thrower and that you know, there were
Speaker 1: long stretches where not that much was happening, and then
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you know, like the red lights
Speaker 1: are all flashing and it's like, oh my god, does
Speaker 1: that blooming? And out of the many sort of near
Speaker 1: death experiences of this mission, UM experience, perhaps the most
Speaker 1: rum attic was the one with which we opened the book,
Speaker 1: because Um, this happened on approach to Puto, when they
Speaker 1: were ten days out. All of a sudden they lost
Speaker 1: contact completely with a spacecraft. And that's something that should
Speaker 1: never happen, of course, And if it happens when you're
Speaker 1: a year out or six months out, then you have
Speaker 1: some time to work the problem and try to get
Speaker 1: back in touch, and hopefully you do. But when it
Speaker 1: happens when you're that close, it's really a panic because
Speaker 1: you don't have much time. Not only do you have
Speaker 1: that initial fear of what if we never hear from
Speaker 1: but again, uh, you know, things do go wrong in spacecraft,
Speaker 1: and there have been spacecraft that have been you know,
Speaker 1: there was one of the Mars spacecraft. Um was made.
Speaker 1: It all the way up basically to the doorstep of Mars,
Speaker 1: and then something went wrong. It probably blew up and
Speaker 1: it was just never heard from again. So those things happen.
Speaker 1: So that's the initial fear. And then once they heard
Speaker 1: from New Horizons, it was a big relief. But what
Speaker 1: they heard from it was basically helped, Um, something's gone wrong.
Speaker 1: I'm not I'm in a bad condition. What should I do? Um?
Speaker 1: Which is good that the spacecraft he knows to say that.
Speaker 1: And again, if it's six months out, then you have
Speaker 1: plenty of time to work the problem. But this was
Speaker 1: an emergency because it was literally days away from when
Speaker 1: they were going to start the final sequence of observations
Speaker 1: that that week long period surrounding the closest encounter everything
Speaker 1: is automated, and it was about to begin that automated sequence.
Speaker 1: And the spacecraft is barreling down on Pluto a million
Speaker 1: miles a day, getting closer, and it's gonna fly by
Speaker 1: no matter what, whether it's working or not. And you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of time, and to make matters worse,
Speaker 1: at that point, you're so far from Earth with the
Speaker 1: spacecraft that it takes nine hours to send a signal
Speaker 1: to the spacecraft and get an answer back. So just
Speaker 1: saying hey, are you okay, and then the spacecraft saying yeah,
Speaker 1: well I'm here, but uh, you know, my main computer
Speaker 1: rebooted and I've lost all the commands for the final
Speaker 1: observing sequence, which is what it said, And just that
Speaker 1: bit of communication takes nine hours, and when you've only
Speaker 1: got a few days start executing this sequence, that's really bad.
Speaker 1: And then you know, so of course they have this
Speaker 1: emergency meeting and they figure try to assess the situation.
Speaker 1: By the way, this also happened on the fourth of July,
Speaker 1: so and the team had been given the day off
Speaker 1: to prepare for the intensity of the encounter to come.
Speaker 1: So the phone tree gets activated. People start coming in
Speaker 1: and there, you know, flip flops and bathing suits from
Speaker 1: their barbecues and um and like that in their flip
Speaker 1: flops and bathing suits. People stay there for like three days,
Speaker 1: and you know they're sleeping under desks and needing out
Speaker 1: of vending machines. And all that like Apollo thirteen, you know,
Speaker 1: And and they basically figure out they have three of
Speaker 1: these nine hour communication UM turnaround times three of these
Speaker 1: to work with, so they're gonna have to fix the
Speaker 1: thing with three batches of commands. That's all the time
Speaker 1: they have. And they just get to work and it's
Speaker 1: there's there's real heroism in this story. And UM, you know,
Speaker 1: we get to UM tell the story of UM some
Speaker 1: of these these characters you know who UM been working
Speaker 1: out of the limelight for UM, you know for decades
Speaker 1: on this and suddenly have their moment of just like
Speaker 1: total heroism, you know, UM, And that's that's great to
Speaker 1: be able to share that with people. UM. And this
Speaker 1: team just kicks into kicks into action and they have
Speaker 1: to rewrite all the software and tested it and figure
Speaker 1: out ways to send it up and what to tell
Speaker 1: the spacecraft and UM, you know, nobody sleeps for like
Speaker 1: multiple days and UM just at the last minute, literally
Speaker 1: with hours to spare, they get everything reloaded on the
Speaker 1: spacecraft and it's UM it ends up executing flawlessly. UM.
Speaker 1: But this was you know, this was the moment of
Speaker 1: crisis that came after everything else and was like sort
Speaker 1: of the last crazy hurdle to be crossed before before
Speaker 1: reaching Pluto. Well, it's an amazing story. It uh, it
Speaker 1: makes you wonder what caused the malfunction to begin with,
Speaker 1: to get some trans neptune and malware. Actually they figured
Speaker 1: that out, oh really, yeah, you know, and it was
Speaker 1: a little bit of an oversight, which is in itself
Speaker 1: an amazing part of the story because one thing you
Speaker 1: read about is how carefully they tested everything and simulated
Speaker 1: everything and accounted for every contingency and tested and retested
Speaker 1: and simulated and resimulated. But there was one thing they
Speaker 1: did um slightly wrong, and that was so what happened
Speaker 1: was the main computer got overloaded because at the same
Speaker 1: time as they were loading up the final command sequences,
Speaker 1: they were compressing some other image files that it had
Speaker 1: previously taken to make more room in the memory, and
Speaker 1: they was overloaded by doing all that. And you might ask, well,
Speaker 1: why didn't they simulate that the compression, uh and the
Speaker 1: loading of the commands at the same time. And the
Speaker 1: answer is they had simulated that, but but the images
Speaker 1: that they had been using to compress in the simulation
Speaker 1: were like fake images of planets. They were like empty
Speaker 1: you know, empty circles to say, here's the planet image
Speaker 1: you're going to compress, you know, while you do this,
Speaker 1: And it turned out that compared to the real images
Speaker 1: that it had to compress, they were um it was
Speaker 1: it was more labor intensive for the for the computer
Speaker 1: to compress these real images and the fake images they
Speaker 1: had gotten given. And so that was the oversight that
Speaker 1: caused the computer to get overloaded and crash and cause
Speaker 1: this whole thing to happen. So the problem was literally
Speaker 1: that Pluto was too interesting. Kind yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: but it also just illustrates that, you know, no matter
Speaker 1: how careful you are, and these guys, I mean, what's
Speaker 1: amazing is how careful they were because as you only
Speaker 1: get one chance, and unlike earlier missions, there was only
Speaker 1: one New Horizons. I mean, you think of all the
Speaker 1: classic missions of ex planetary exploration, there's Voyager, Viking, all
Speaker 1: these ones, these pioneer first missions to places. They did
Speaker 1: too in case one of them failed, and sometimes one
Speaker 1: of them did fail. But in this case, budget wise
Speaker 1: and for other reasons, there was only one small spacecraft
Speaker 1: and so it had to be perfect. So they tested
Speaker 1: and retested and had backup systems. But even given all that,
Speaker 1: there's just no way you can anticipate everything. And that's
Speaker 1: why you need like an amazing team like they had
Speaker 1: that can kick into action and solve problems when they
Speaker 1: come up. All right, we're gonna jump in here and
Speaker 1: take a quick break, but we'll be right back. And
Speaker 1: we're back now. Of course, the journey doesn't end with
Speaker 1: with Pluto. Can you tell us a little bit about
Speaker 1: Aero cough and the further adventures of New Horizons. Um,
Speaker 1: that's right. Pluto was, you know, maybe the highlight, but
Speaker 1: certainly not not the end of the mission. And one
Speaker 1: thing that was kind of innovative actually about New Horizons,
Speaker 1: very innovative, was that all along the plan was not
Speaker 1: just to go to Pluto, but to go to Pluto
Speaker 1: and at least one and maybe more Coper Belt objects.
Speaker 1: And and the mission was sold on that basis as
Speaker 1: a mission to Pluto and the Coper Belt. But one
Speaker 1: kind of crazy aspect of that is that at the
Speaker 1: time of launch of New Horizons, they did not know
Speaker 1: of another Copper Belt object that New Horizons could meet,
Speaker 1: that could could could intersect after Puto with the amount
Speaker 1: of fuel and on the trajectory that it was on.
Speaker 1: But they had very good statistical arguments as to why
Speaker 1: there should be such an object and why they should
Speaker 1: would no problem be able to discover it before New
Speaker 1: Horizons got to Pluto and redirect the trajectory because they
Speaker 1: knew that, you know, there were enough objects. They knew
Speaker 1: that they just they if you do the math, that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be hard to find another place where Horizon to
Speaker 1: go to after Pluto, and you're gonna find that object
Speaker 1: during the nine year journey to Pluto. So that logic
Speaker 1: was in the proposal and it was pretty good. But
Speaker 1: then what happened was as New Horizons was approaching Pludo
Speaker 1: over all the years it does the Jupiter fly by,
Speaker 1: it redirects its trajectory. It's heading out towards Pluto, and
Speaker 1: they're searching and searching with all the best ground based
Speaker 1: telescopes on Mona Kea and all these big telescopes UM
Speaker 1: and they're not finding the right object. They're not finding
Speaker 1: an object that New Horizons can get to. And then
Speaker 1: it got to the point where it was going to
Speaker 1: be too late and they weren't going to be able
Speaker 1: to UM execute that part of the mission. And the
Speaker 1: sort of the last minute they called in the Hubble
Speaker 1: space telescope and there was some drama there because Hubble,
Speaker 1: of course is very scheduled up for other observations and
Speaker 1: they had to kind of go to NASA Brass and say, look,
Speaker 1: this is really important. If you want New Horizons to succeed,
Speaker 1: we need to sort of command here a little bit
Speaker 1: of time on the Hubble for the search to find
Speaker 1: an object. And there was some some drama and some
Speaker 1: you know, conflict and then but ultimately they were able
Speaker 1: to do it. And literally, you know, it's another one
Speaker 1: of these sort of just a nick of time. Uh.
Speaker 1: They found an object that New Horizons could visit, which
Speaker 1: was you know MU sixty nine originally and then was
Speaker 1: given a more appropriate name. But um, but so just
Speaker 1: the finding of it was very dramatic and then um,
Speaker 1: but but they did and then um, you know, they
Speaker 1: did they made the right trajectory corrections so that after
Speaker 1: after the Pluto encounter, New Horizons was on its way. Um,
Speaker 1: but had to go another billion miles and traveled all
Speaker 1: the way from July when they were at Pluto to
Speaker 1: New Year's Eve. Um, you know, so another two and
Speaker 1: a half years. Um and um, finally, um, this encounter
Speaker 1: happened and uh and boy was it amazing Again another
Speaker 1: surprising object that you know, you've probably seen the pictures
Speaker 1: what it looked sort like a snowman. But just the
Speaker 1: fact that it's this some kind of a contact binary.
Speaker 1: These two objects sort of squished together, really reveal something
Speaker 1: about the formation of planets and the history of these
Speaker 1: objects in the Cooper Belt. And again you know, they're
Speaker 1: just the targeting that went into it's incredible how difficult
Speaker 1: it is. It's even harder than the targeting for Puda
Speaker 1: because this object is small. You're not completely sure where
Speaker 1: it is, You're not completely sure where where the spacecraft is.
Speaker 1: You've got one shot to image it, you're moving very fast,
Speaker 1: and you have to pre program the images in advance.
Speaker 1: And just the fact that you know, when they get
Speaker 1: that frame down there's actually an object in focus in
Speaker 1: the image rather than looking at empty space because you
Speaker 1: targeted a little bit wrong. That's that's like people take
Speaker 1: that it's easy to take that for granted because it
Speaker 1: works so well, but that's you know, that's a real
Speaker 1: incredible achievement. It is amazing. Um. So one thing I
Speaker 1: was wondering if you don't mind kind of a tangent
Speaker 1: while we're out here in the realm of transneptunity and objects.
Speaker 1: I was wondering you have a professional opinion about something
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show a while back, the
Speaker 1: the evidence seeming to indicate the existence of a far off,
Speaker 1: larger planet out there that well, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you'd use this terminology because of how you feel about
Speaker 1: naming Pluto, but what's being called planet nine? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: prefer planet X. But UM, my professional and my personal
Speaker 1: opinion is, UM, I hope they find it because it
Speaker 1: would be so cool to learn about another large um
Speaker 1: uh planet in our in our solar system. And UM,
Speaker 1: I think I'm skeptical just because the history of this
Speaker 1: kind of prediction is um you know, sort of littered
Speaker 1: with um you know, with things that weren't found where
Speaker 1: people said, I haven't actually found it, but I've found
Speaker 1: reason to believe it's there because of the statistical aberration
Speaker 1: in um, the in other orbits um uh. There's been
Speaker 1: a lot of sort of false alarms along those lines. UM.
Speaker 1: But you know, whether or not we agree on what
Speaker 1: numbers should be assigned to this punitive planet. I'm with
Speaker 1: them completely in the hope that they do find it,
Speaker 1: because it would be a wonderful discovery. Yeah, I'm very
Speaker 1: intrigued by the idea. Uh so we uh we We
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier that we might give you some room to
Speaker 1: talk about your passion planet, about Venus here at the
Speaker 1: end if you wanted to do do you have anything
Speaker 1: to say about Venus? Like what, what? What do you
Speaker 1: have your eye on there right now? Well, I'm very
Speaker 1: much hoping that we do get a mission to Venus
Speaker 1: in the next round of NASA selections, because they were
Speaker 1: really overdue, and um, there's too much mystery about about
Speaker 1: that world, considering that it's you know, the closest planet
Speaker 1: to us and in some ways the most earth like
Speaker 1: other planet. Um. And in particular, now we more and
Speaker 1: more reason to think that Venus might have gone through
Speaker 1: a long phase when it was a habitable world. We
Speaker 1: used to have this this picture that Venus maybe had
Speaker 1: oceans early on but lost them very quickly in the
Speaker 1: runaway greenhouse. But the more we do detailed modeling of
Speaker 1: how an early Venus would transition to a planet without
Speaker 1: to a very hot and dry planet that we see
Speaker 1: today the more we suspect that that took billions of years,
Speaker 1: and so it may be that Venus was an oceanic
Speaker 1: planet like Earth for billions of years UM, which is
Speaker 1: very intriguing. This picture of these two um very similar,
Speaker 1: very very nearby worlds, both of which could have been
Speaker 1: habitable for you know, half the or half the history
Speaker 1: of the Solar System, um. And so there are a
Speaker 1: lot there are a lot of mysteries that are very
Speaker 1: compelling as far as understanding how Earth like worlds evolve,
Speaker 1: how climate evolves, um and UM. It's it's sitting right
Speaker 1: there waiting for us to explore. I mean, of course,
Speaker 1: Venus is a hard place to explore because the surface
Speaker 1: conditions now are so intense, and because it's completely shrouded
Speaker 1: in clouds. You can't observe the surface from orbit except
Speaker 1: in the radar. You can't get to the surface very
Speaker 1: easily without a really incredibly engineered machine. So it's not
Speaker 1: you know, it makes sense that we've explored other places first,
Speaker 1: because Venus is not low hanging fruit as far as
Speaker 1: easy places to explore. But it's such a compelling place
Speaker 1: as far as the mysteries there that I do think
Speaker 1: that before long, either NASA or the European Space Agency
Speaker 1: or UM maybe even the Russians. I mean, there are
Speaker 1: not there are a number of agencies considering ambitious new
Speaker 1: missions to uh to Venus, and I'm excited and I
Speaker 1: hope I'm I hope I'm still around when we really
Speaker 1: get to UM to answer some of these mysteries. For
Speaker 1: some reason, I've often thought or thought for a long
Speaker 1: time one of the most haunting sets of images from
Speaker 1: the whole Solar System is just the those little tiny
Speaker 1: slivers we get of the surface of Venus from the
Speaker 1: Soviet Venera landers. I there's not a lot in them,
Speaker 1: but every time I see them, I kind of get
Speaker 1: a shiver. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, there's something
Speaker 1: very kind of dreamlike about them, UM, because they look
Speaker 1: so real and so sort of familiar in some ways.
Speaker 1: I mean, here's a rocky world that's right next door.
Speaker 1: And yet because they're you know, maybe enhanced by the
Speaker 1: fact that the geometry of these images are so distorted,
Speaker 1: and we uh, just by the nature of the cameras
Speaker 1: that got them, and we only have a few. It's
Speaker 1: just it's like this glimpse of a world that we
Speaker 1: can't really bring into focus. UM, and UM, it really
Speaker 1: makes you want to see more clearly what's you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's over that hill and what's you know, what's
Speaker 1: what's really going on here? And so UM, yeah, next
Speaker 1: generation of spacecraft that could measure the minerals on the surface, UM,
Speaker 1: measure that the composition of the atmosphere in a way
Speaker 1: that we haven't really done yet, measure what's going on
Speaker 1: in the clouds where there's a lot of mystery and
Speaker 1: even some people think there could be um, some kind
Speaker 1: of life in the clouds, I believe it or not. UM.
Speaker 1: But then but then also, like you say, you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's going on with those service images really images
Speaker 1: the surface well and just give us more of a visual,
Speaker 1: uh and physical sense of what that place is like. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm I'm very excited for that possibility. We'll
Speaker 1: tell us what we can do to help get us
Speaker 1: back to Venus flud NASA with letters honestly, UM, you know,
Speaker 1: it never hurts to talk to your elected representatives, but UM,
Speaker 1: you know, honestly, I think just you know, when you
Speaker 1: have an appropriate chance expressing enthusiasm for the space program
Speaker 1: and Planetariar planetary exploration in general is is a good thing,
Speaker 1: And um, I don't you know, I feel like it's
Speaker 1: I feel like there is momentum to do uh new
Speaker 1: missions to Venus, like it is going to happen and
Speaker 1: in the next time scale of the next next decade.
Speaker 1: So I'm maybe I'm foolishly optimistic, but I am optimistic
Speaker 1: about it. All right. Well, the book is Chasing New
Speaker 1: Horizons Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan
Speaker 1: Stern and David Grinspoon. It's available now, and I think
Speaker 1: all formats correct. Yes, that's right, it's even it just
Speaker 1: got just got published in Russian. If you're listening to
Speaker 1: this program and you don't speak English, excellent. Alright, So
Speaker 1: that book is is out In the past, you've written
Speaker 1: on Venus and you've written on Earth. Uh so where
Speaker 1: are you headed next? And how can listeners keep up
Speaker 1: with your work? Well, Um, I have a website, um
Speaker 1: Funky science dot net and um that's I sometimes remember
Speaker 1: to keep it current. I'm on Twitter as Dr Funky
Speaker 1: Spoon um, and um yeah, I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be.
Speaker 1: I've got all kinds of things going. I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: teaching a class at Georgetown this spring on how to
Speaker 1: Predict the Future, which maybe that'll turn into a book,
Speaker 1: I hope. So and uh, you know, just catch me
Speaker 1: if you can. All right, Well, well, once again thanks
Speaker 1: for taking time out of your day to chat with us. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, the book is fabulous and we we strongly
Speaker 1: recommend it to all our listeners. Well, thanks for god,
Speaker 1: it's been great having the opportunity to talk to you guys.
Speaker 1: Thanks David, thank you. All right, So there you have
Speaker 1: it again. The title of the book is Chasing New
Speaker 1: Horizons Inside the epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan
Speaker 1: Stern and David Grinspoon. It's out in just about any
Speaker 1: format you could possibly want a book. And then again,
Speaker 1: I just have to drive home just how entertaining this
Speaker 1: book is. You might not think you want a book
Speaker 1: about machines and planets and distant planets, but it is.
Speaker 1: It is really exciting. In the meantime, if you want
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: That'll set you on the right path. But you can
Speaker 1: find this podcast anywhere you get your podcasts these days.
Speaker 1: Wherever that happens to be. Make sure that you subscribe
Speaker 1: and make sure that you rate in review, because this
Speaker 1: really helps us out. Huge thanks, of course to Dr
Speaker 1: David Grinspoon for joining us, but huge thanks as always
Speaker 1: to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you
Speaker 1: would like to get in touch with us with feedback
Speaker 1: on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic
Speaker 1: for the future, or just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production
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