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Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast AM on

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Speaker 1: iHeart Radio. David Greenspoon. First, of course, you know David.

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Speaker 1: He's been on the program lots of times. He's an astrobiologist,

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Speaker 1: award winning science communicator, prize winning author. At two thousand sixteen,

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Speaker 1: appointed the in Our Goal Chair of Astrobiology at the

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Speaker 1: Library of Congress and has been a senior scientist at

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Speaker 1: the Planetary Science Institute as well. With Alan Stern, they

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Speaker 1: have written the book called Chasing New Horizons, which we're

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Speaker 1: going to talk about. And David, welcome back. It's always

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Speaker 1: good to have you on the show. Thank you. Nice

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Speaker 1: to be talking with you again. George. What what are

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Speaker 1: your thoughts of NASA finding these organic molecules on Mars. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it's very exciting. Uh, you know, it's um kind of

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Speaker 1: what we were looking for when we when we sent

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Speaker 1: this rover back to Mars. Uh, we were sent Viking

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Speaker 1: in ninety six and realized that we didn't fully know

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Speaker 1: what we were looking for. And we're sort of puzzled

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Speaker 1: by those results. And now we've taken this more methodical

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Speaker 1: approach to trying to find the right environments on Mars

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Speaker 1: with UH you know, with clues to at least ancient life.

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Speaker 1: And now we've you know, they've hit pay dirt in

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Speaker 1: these in these mudstones, these these preserved organic molecules are

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Speaker 1: are telling us something important about the history of organic

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Speaker 1: matter on that planet. We care a lot about organic

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Speaker 1: matter because because that's what we are. I think one

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Speaker 1: day they're gonna find even more on Mars, don't you think. Well, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm sure they will, because you know, we literally are

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Speaker 1: discratching the surface right with this this little primitive rovers

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Speaker 1: at these little drills, and now that we know that

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Speaker 1: it's there, we're going to go back and really start

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Speaker 1: to um holding in on the right kind of environments

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Speaker 1: on Mars. Yeah, find more of that stuff. David, tell

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Speaker 1: me about new horizons and the interest in Pluto got

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Speaker 1: knocked off as a planet, So why go out there

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Speaker 1: tell me about it? Oh? Uh, gosh, I don't where

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Speaker 1: to start with that. I mean, it's it's it's scientifically,

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Speaker 1: it's it's a fascinating place. Uh, you know in ways

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Speaker 1: that we we suspected before we explored it. But we

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Speaker 1: you know, we had no idea what kind of a

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Speaker 1: treasure trove it was going to be. When you know,

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Speaker 1: when we were ultimately able to discover what it's really

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Speaker 1: like there, but also just in terms of pure exploration,

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Speaker 1: it was you know, it was it was a part

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Speaker 1: of the Solar System we had never been to, even

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Speaker 1: after the Voyager mission when we explored you know, what

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Speaker 1: we what we used to think of as the outer

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Speaker 1: Solar System out to Neptune, and then we discovered this

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Speaker 1: whole other realm of the Solar System even farther out.

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Speaker 1: And so you know, we had to send a spacecraft

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Speaker 1: out there to uh, just to see what it's like.

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Speaker 1: But uh, you know, it wasn't easy. It was it

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Speaker 1: started out. It's just a kind of what seemed like

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Speaker 1: a crazy dream. Uh and uh, you know, therein lies

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Speaker 1: a tale of how how it ultimately was that dream

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Speaker 1: became successful mission. Amazing technology to be able to control

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Speaker 1: the spacecraft some three billion miles out there, and just

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Speaker 1: truly remarkable, isn't it. Yeah, it really is. I mean,

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Speaker 1: you know, it's it's remarkable at all in a way

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Speaker 1: that we've been able to get to the point where

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Speaker 1: we could send spacecraft off Earth and go anywhere else.

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Speaker 1: But you know, we we meant it. We learned how

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Speaker 1: to do that starting in you know, in really the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties and then you know, you we were sort

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Speaker 1: of taking baby steps to the nearby planets. But this

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Speaker 1: is a whole other thing. I mean, take a ten

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Speaker 1: year journey the fastest spacecraft ever sent from Earth and

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Speaker 1: the amount of time it takes two to get there,

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Speaker 1: and the fact that everything has to work over all

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Speaker 1: that time period, you know, work perfectly, and there's only

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Speaker 1: one spacecraft. Unlike with you know, the old days, with

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Speaker 1: the voyagers and vikings and everything we sent to to

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Speaker 1: make sure at least one of them works. This was

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Speaker 1: a low you know, relatively is low budget project. They

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Speaker 1: only could build one. Um. It was doing a lot

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Speaker 1: of things that had never been done before, going farther

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Speaker 1: than had ever uh you know, we had ever sent

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Speaker 1: a spacecraft and it all had to work perfectly the

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Speaker 1: first and only time. You know, it's a one shot deal.

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Speaker 1: And so the technology is is remarkable and it's you know,

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Speaker 1: it's a product of a remarkable group of people who

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Speaker 1: were really dedicated to to this goal. Where is New

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Speaker 1: Horizons now? New Horizons now is almost a billion miles

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Speaker 1: past pludo. It's uh yeah, yeah, it's still functioning very well,

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Speaker 1: and it's exploring you know this zone. Now we know

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Speaker 1: Pludo is part of the zone that we call the

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Speaker 1: Coper Belt where there are a large number of objects,

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Speaker 1: many of which are small building blocks of the planet's

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Speaker 1: primordial building blocks. And New Horizons actually heading towards another

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Speaker 1: encounter this coming New Year's Eve. It's going to make

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Speaker 1: a very close fly by of a small object called Ultimateule,

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Speaker 1: which means beyond the farthest frontier. That's kind of perfect

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Speaker 1: because it really is uh. And we you know, we

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Speaker 1: don't we don't know anything about we know very little

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Speaker 1: about it. Uh. And so this is another yet another

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Speaker 1: encounter that's coming up with New Horizons this this New

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Speaker 1: Year's Eve. And you know so, I mean, Pluto was

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Speaker 1: just spectacular, but but New Horizons is not finished yet.

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Speaker 1: Listen to more Coast to Coast a m every weeknight

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