This episode of astronomy cast is brought to you bye swing burn astronomy online the world longest running online astronomy degree program this it astronomy dot s w i n died at u dot eighty for more information. Started yeah episode two hundred twenty nine from one day early teens two thousand eleven. Any mission was starting to cast on for me backspace journey through because most ring help you understand only what we know what how we know what we know my name is presenting i'm a publisher university with me is doctor time like it us or. Southern illinois university the family don't. I'm doing well how are you doing the same thing i'm doing really well it's still the uh were summer ever although again you know because we're recording in uh july but it's really the april to wonder why it's uh bad summer but uh yeah it's terrible summer. We're we're we're just prague not to kidding the weather yeah but yeah it's i predict city in july two thousand eleven near vancouver island the weather will be horrible. But uh yeah so and it did you have any more reminders now we're gonna be doing the live episode astronomy cast s dragging con labor day weekend and we're going to be doing a special it's trying to cast with chloe with your daughter you alright. Yeah okay yeah going on well yeah we're gonna do a half hour it'll show with chloe questions from a nine year old. Just got all kinds of questions but it was gonna be lots of our friends are gonna be there bill. Oh having greys yours or it'll probably do a live show with with all of them as well and we're also going to do er not lowry and i are going to do a physics demonstration show where we attempt to not kill each other with things like that does nails. Cool sounds great though yeah come out come watches speed nerdy dark steering pressure shows and playing with lasers and blowing up balloons inside of balloons because we can and uh stuff like that. That's good wool prolific how you do that like white black balloon sort of white bloom. Uh you you get one of those transparent balloons like they have that laurel stores that you put teddy bears inside yeah and you fill it with either dark purple or dark blue or one of those really dark sets of small balloons shine a green laser through the clear balloon. And shine it on the dark colored balloon and the dark colored believable expanded explode and it's a glorious day. That's really cool. All of the blue losers. For the terrifying. But more efficient almighty imagine having a blue lizards horst. It's going to show so last week we talk to will be italian astronomer g a funny because see any this week workable the mission that shares his name now says because see any space craft this amazing mission is orbiting saturn right now sitting back thousands of. I resolution images oh the ring planet and it's meant. Or thomas talk about to see any and i'll just go like right for the beginning to see any is good for. Is like the highlight mission all my life really yeah i think so i mean i think of all the missions that i've been most excited about reporting universe today you know. I it launched around the time that i started working on the site and go out to uh saturn what two thousand four and yet you know and and i've been sort of it's it's like fall pays with my entire. Uh career so it's uh yeah i'm really really set about focusing so. And it's got a really long history i mean it yeah what what before we were born i think it's. I'm not quite quite quite it goes back to elementary school perfect so so you know what the beginning of to see. Well it back in nineteen eighty two. Folks are trying to figure out what next what do we do and this was when we were still working off the. Voyager prost route they're still sending back day that we still had the mariner missions and this was supposed to be a part of uh mariner mark to set as missions it was going to be. It wasn't called p c d back then it was it had a long complicated name involving as you might guess saturn. And then there was also i sister mission a comet ron days you asteroid fly by. And the idea was these are both going to be mariner missions have very similar hardware have basically the a save money by doing two things that are very similar a except then there wasn't money to do to missions and. Well with only enough money to do one the decision was made that saturn was the much more interesting target and can see the became a stand alone highly specialized mission. That uh with optimize to learn as much as possible about sadler. Right and and this is the first time mobile missions have been sent. Towards saturn before then you'd have the piney her and the. And the void years they were fly by missions and so the glory look to see any was to not fly past the planet's but to actually go into orbit and then get do fly possible the moon's and gather a lot more science really close up. Right and and said there was just it really nice laundry list of science missions where we were trying to better understand the it. Dynamics of the rings are things like this folks that have been seen real we were trying to. Figure out what is the surface history of all of the different moon's do they share the same history do they have different histories due to differences in origins. Then there's just a weird things like i office being a to colored object and uh well we didn't even really know before because see how long it took saturn to rotate on it's access. So all these different things about all of the different moods and about the nine need is fear and about well saturn itself and it's clouds. All these different things got piled on to the future of because see any but along with piling on the goals they piled on the instrument. And this is mission that how to healthy enough budget that it was able to do all the things that i wanted to do it caymen at three point two six billion dollars which. Is is a hefty price tag but it worked it's a big spacecraft yeah. And so it's really well equipped to do this work so one to the mission finally come together. Doesn't it finally launched in nineteen ninety seven. So you were getting universe today started i was uh contemplating my first year of graduate school and was completely oblivious to the entire thing. And what's interesting though is it's almost died many times between it's nineteen eighty two. Conception and it's nineteen ninety seven launch. Congress kept trying to kill it off in the nineties and what saved it is this mission. Well a sweetheart of the u. s.. Space program and while largely funded by the u. s. space program with actually one is the admissions it helped really he'll our relationships with the european space agency and it's different number nations. And in the late eighties early nineties we work to make this uh really solid collaboration where the quite as preferences came from the europeans and many of these route instruments came from the europeans. And everytime congress tried to kill off this little mission it it's really huge giant mission actually now so it was able to step forward and say you probably don't wanna do that we like the europeans and we want them to like us back. It's interesting as we're going through this like i was a recording it's it's the same story you know about james web and the you know now the space shuttle is goes but i mean that's been ongoing stories. Missions almost killed so where the mission actually makes it off the plane and you can you know than than fast you know that's when you finally uh arrived. So we have marginally seven but it had to take pretty strict circuit through this route circular this all goes out to saturn right right so it it didn't have the most powerful engines ever any satellite has ever had. And uh so it we've got grab occasional sister venus more than once. It with the past the earth got some good images of earth is it went by. And finally headed out towards saturn via jupiter and got some pictures and jupiter's it went by that so we have the space craft that basically took a. Full towards the software system on its way out and there's a big controversy but if you remember what it was about to launch. There was this big controversy because it had that blue told him i yeah after on board and so it was actually you know. Kind of filled with poisonous plutonium. And people worried that you know what it would launch if there was a problem a launch disaster it would spread between around the earth and as well for the subsequent fly buys when it had to go past the the earth there was another you know people are kind of freaked out. Right so this mission has uh you can't use solar panels when you're out at saturn there's just not quite enough sunlight out there so it has roughly seventy pounds or thirty two point seven kilograms. Of plutonium t thirty eight which is the nicely radioactive producing heat as a to k's element. And it's from that he that they're able to generate electricity. And the concern why is that it could either blow up on launch and release all that radioactive material into the atmosphere or on it's one lone fly by they ran models and in the worst case scenario. If the mission came through add just the right perfect absolutely miraculously it and actually has much probability it happening if it came and it just the right angle. It could completely burn up in the atmosphere and distribute all of the plutonium through the atmosphere. And because an additional five thousand cases of cancer per population the planet or. But it didn't happen so it didn't happen yeah and they took the rest because the probability said it wouldn't happen uhhuh yeah but you can imagine uh that being be on going controversy for any of the user. Flights are gonna be going out you know be on the warm embrace of the sun um you know you're gonna need somebody which was only. We we might be actually avoiding that problem due to current sent it cuts we we actually aren't currently producing pretending to thirty eight and we're running out of these engines. I believe there's less than five left and they're all allocated to projects already full time and so if we want to continue building into the future we need to turn back on plutonium t thirty eight production of. And that was part of the upcoming budget but it's one of the items along with the james web space telescope it's currently acts. So so to see any makes this this um you know fly buys of of earth and you know so. And then made just wonderful fly by two per cent back an amazing images and what what was great was was the galileo spacecraft with out jupiter at the time into a to send back these. These amazing sort of images in concert together and and they actually were able to sort of combine science was g spacecraft it was was quite a time. Well it it's one of those rare instances where you can get the up close view of the spacecraft it's anymore but and get the big picture view that allows you to see all the contacts from the that uh. Further away space craft and ah so if you can if you've ever done any going back and forth between binoculars and i p swore binoculars in your eyes. Well they were able to do that by going back and forth between two satellites yeah and so if you like do a search for from jupiter like google images and stuff like that a lot of the full pictures you'll see your jupiter work actually take about two seen even though. Galileo spent so much time at jupiter gal it was a a block closer and switch it didn't get as much nice sort of. Views from a foreign so they still really rely almost images route to see any when you know when they're showing images of of joop or so obscene even you know made it all the way up to saturn and what was it dials in for. It may it out and two thousand and four and uh. On its way in as it started what was one of these scarier or but all in surgeons ever because you're kind of dodging move dodging rings. Trying to get yourself into all of it they they had to first rotate the space craft so that it's large dish would basically protect all of its instruments from the dust and debris of flying through the ranks. And not through the rings through a gap but ah then they had to turn to space craft around so that it could fire if engines in the direction of it's motion to radically slow it down for or blown searching. So this was all sorts of crazy maneuvering and the space craft just took it all in stride and i it was able in june of two thousand and four to send us pictures of the little battered moon phoebe and uh. In july zip through input itself into or of it because nasa likes to do everything on national holidays in fourth of july seems like a perfectly good time to. Celebrate. Another or but only she's not was on canada you know to the per what. And i'm having a anyway huh yeah i know it me or just coming back from people just amazing i mean that was just yeah you could see as soon as you saw those images you knew we were dealing with something. You know this was a whole new way of seeing photographs from space i mean there are so good and then. And then well eh the entire time there's very large space craft was carrying a parasite with it. So that way against mission was latch on and sucking powerful from it's plutonium drive and was carried all the way. Up intel december and on december twenty set the european space agency. Separated off there quite into probe from because see any and it began it's long journey to tighten and it was on january fourteenth that. We were finally able to. See the surface another world that had active geology from atmospheres from weather in from rivers from delta's and so that. Symbiotic relationship theory ping space agency. Allowed us to basically get to to major scientific missions for the price of one. Yeah there are some amazing um videos now after the fact remember what it was first coming out you measures were pretty rough it was it was really hard to really get a sense of what you were seeing until two. You actually saw the images all on the ground but since then people have gone into the water work with the images and sort of build is really neat. Animations you can see the. You know. From space watching the or from from a really high altitude watching what williams was seeing as it was descending through titans atmosphere all the way pretty much down to the surface of the of the mooney see these just these great um. You know the sort of speeding vista as of uh of the surface of the moon until it actually plunked down into the was like mud on the outskirts of oh it was kind of value them and then you see just just you can't it blows your mind you're seeing. These kind of rolling hills with boulders of. You know rock in mock with the movie um yeah it was like died abide with no vegetation. Yeah yeah i know just them just astounding to think what what's it going through to make that happen so soon so then casino alright hoi against but it's done a really nice fly past of time still have the uh have gotten rid of it so parasite. You know and uh and it kept moving right. Yeah and one of the amazing things about white games was they realized after launch after the mission was good and far away from the planet earth set up like instead of rather fatal flaw. And they were able to figure out how to compensate for that. In real well not in real time they figured out ahead of time but they figured out how they. Compensate mid stream um as we've talked about on the show before when an object is in motion it's light its radio it's it's wavelengths get doctor shifted. And. They had tune and because he need to listen to wake ends as a drop through the atmosphere of tightened and the firm where forgot to take into consideration that there'd be the dots like shift of the signals. And so when they tested things they realized many actually terrorist it won't be able to catch the signal. And um they figured out how to to change the way things where aligned and they were able to figure out how to make it work so that they could catch all of the data and nothing was lost in the end. Yeah. In this like you know this was around a string of of problems you remember there was like the. Ah what was the other ones the polar. Mars polar land or portland or nor the yeah there was there was like hold are you in a doctor's yeah there is one it was just smashed into the atmosphere disappeared there's the beagle to the just disappeared so. And then there's another which they ah they had used the wrong like like in purely metric system so there was a strange rain i have yeah right during a string of of big problems and yet there was lots of great. You know engineering successes as well where people and right for you know ways to you know hm make other missions run on like a single gyro and be yeah right. So no how come you know there's a lot of those missions where like with the the rover is where. They keep going and going and going but like pretty much one toy guns was was dawn that was all we saw of it like it's impeccable or just the we didn't hear any more news from oregon so why would i edit battery life. So so like ends with a happy little parasite on because see any drawing energy also it's it's plutonium there myself basically. Up and tell that december twenty fifth launch separation on it and once it separated it wasn't carry the nuclear feels also is working in chemical batteries. And the chemical batteries had a finite life and then mission had a finite life and they weren't sure it would even survive impact but it lasted a couple minutes past impact. And um it just wasn't designed to keep going and going and going you you have to cut wait somewhere you have to cut costs somewhere. And in the end not knowing what they'd land on they they budgeted to get as much data for the parachute ride down as they possibly could and um. If that ended. Yeah yeah i can them i can kind of imagine you said you some of the newer technology right you mention if they made like some kind of rover technology or had um you know i done something like that that. That then that would have been you know a much better wage yeah you know some of the newer technology what the uh you know spirit opportunities up out of an amazing well it the the problem that they ran into is they had no way of knowing they needed dust buggy or a. Swamp vehicle. And uh when you're not sure if you need to float are you need to role it's it's hard to the plan for that yeah. Alright so so we go up the uh the cool blending a tight and if you want more details on with a whole showing tightened we don't have social and saturn which almost one saturns moon so you know we're we're more talking about the mission that actually the discovers on on the moon is on the planet so far. Yeah so so then we and i mean that was like the first fly by the time but but we did i but if they did. You know so many fly box. And within some of this we we were able to for the first time start to get a sense of what's rejuvenating the rings by the discovery of the guys there's coming off of that water pressurized moon. And what's amazing is just like the mars exploration rowe versus this is the space craft it also want to die. And uh so here it is it's in it's second mission extension at this point. They decided to extend it through the economics it occurred in two thousand nine which is where we should saw the ratings completely at john and seem to disappear into the star light i. And there now extending it into the next souls just period so we'll get to see the other pull of saturn from earth well the scene he gets to watch how does the atmosphere saturn. Change as the sun light changes and with need is one of its discoveries was this. Rather terrifying board tax on the pull of saturn and uh. It'll be neat to see are there any changes in that i wall as the. Thurman dynamics of the system changes. Well the the if i'm not strange heck's are gone shape storm right yeah yeah. And effect we better that's warmer mysteries of solar system show i think right city so there there's the- strange for tax on venus the strange were texans saturn i'm kinda glad we don't have a stranger for tax on earth. It it's just kind of amazing and the only thing that scary right now is well it has been expanded out through the next soul stuff. There's concerns that right now they're doing senior review of all of the nasa missions that are on extended missions there's limited funding and the fear is that. Maybe that's maybe l r o maybe who knows all of these different missions that are up for an extension are. Being reviewed and they could die it's part of the two point two to four trillion dollar budget cuts in the u. s. government. Oh yeah so here's to hoping alr- oh survive james web survive i see the other drives um we want our mission so. But as we would you earlier in the show right this is the story like it's almost like no mission ever. Gets out a lot right now they all get beaten up at some point and really just the toughest ones it's like some kind of glad unified to get a mission launched yeah um. So so what would you feel some of the big house one from the big discoveries because he made as as part of it's it's. You know mission saturn so i i have to say my favorite is realizing what the heck happened after this to caused this to toned moving to exist and look chewed out the way it does. This is the moon and when you look at it it has one face it is black black black black and the other side is this shiny white highly reflective ice. And what they're able to figure out is at some point in the past this minutes rotating so slowly that it has one edge that tends to lead around the or bet and that edge just collecting dust. And that dust made the surface darker and the darker surface heated up and the ice didn't know if it supplemented but any dusting gas it was trapped in that supplemented nice was then revealed and it became the feedback system where. The hotter the surface got the more stubborn made it the darker it god is more dust was revealed and it's now thought to be several centimeters deep in his black carbon nations gross substance that. There's not like to reflect like. And it's got that really weird seeing mostly really close the book on uh you know that that one they're still trying to figure out i mean edit certain level it's part of the other solar system type the tar beat out of it but exactly what caused that we don't know. Right so so we brought a handle on why i office has that strange to tone color right thanks you see any. I mean and we found the heck's are gone yeah x. because he any don't we found some new moons and it's always fun to find new moon hiding out in the ratings. You don't. Tightened just. We keep getting awesome new ideas on tight and this is this is the noon you know if i was given a choice of your roper tightened to send. Real exploration vehicles to i'm not sure which one i chit. You're over yeah yeah but but then they'll hurry my head it's like looking bedroom writing is so much more likely to be successful. Oh yeah i agree the return on europe is probably much greater but where where it learning so much about tighten and. The mission is planning to do actually one terrifying like close fly by have tightened that well then send it on in orbit that makes it just a few thousand kwong letters above uh saturns clouds. And it's going to do two of those clothes fly bias in the second if that's close fly by as well actually send because see the on a death or a bit into the atmosphere saturn they don't want tighten or and sell it as or any of the other. News that have liquid to potentially get polluted with earth two birds and uh so rather than let our bacteria get to the surface of one of those men's they're gonna suicide the satellite. You get pretty records with these missions near the end to do that would go it was well which is and we you know now let's get some extreme science something right it closer and closer more radiation and finally went to. Oh well we can you know we can kill it this way let's uh just drop it in but i but a big part of it as you said is that you know do what ever they do they don't want to um in fact any part of the this attorney system where. Might gross from work so. In the end because he's going to be uh shut off and it's gonna be shove off or it's gonna be crashed into the planets. When they still can talk to it right like if if it's suffer some kind of big damage or the system quickly runs out of power and they can't control anymore that it's too late right there you know they're gonna they're gonna shut it down sooner than a half do. Because it don't work anymore right um you know we talked about some other discoveries right the the. Discovery oh liquid on tight and right so there you mean nothing rain nothing lakes they'd say completely different geology than we're used to that absolutely amazing. Yeah there's just so much stuff we're good the guys where's the ice guys is on install of of. The tiger striped thing they they rings where confirms to have spokesman have these weird uh gravitates should know interactions they're not as in metric is you might expect them to be. And so we're slowly learning more and more about the dynamics of the rings finding twists and ropes and the reins yep. And on what with kinda amazing is as well doing all this science nasa's reached out through the forms of one man space flight and said hey we'd also like to just get some beautiful kodak moments and they've ask the public. To contribute what're this time so we should try and. I i heard careless caroline parker talking once about how they've had to do these crazy maneuvers where as they're flying past the news or rotating the space craft and excel or anything and imaging and doing all of this stuff at once. But the result is being able to do some absolutely amazing videos and almost everything can be found over on only like to while it's plugged that planetary society blah again. It with amazing oh what i'm only does is if she can't find them and she wants she gets is a planetary data system and she downloads images in process is not. So she said yeah amazing stuff you gave three quick shows they're weak should pull them down right on my on ma'am space flight is a fantastic forum for talking about uh various missions. Uh highly recommend it. As well caroline portal use the the. She's the primary investigator oh yeah even here for the yeah for because he mission and has done a better job than a pretty much anybody in the whole industry in getting the word out a boat her mission i mean. You know even when i started university way back in the day if i made a mistake caroline is or who was you know what city mean email right away saying oh you know you miss this you made a mistake there but she was all the really good about. How about helping you know me get the word or both yeah we were doing for her mission so so i think you know anyone else who's going to be involved in this kind of a public affairs mission what can what she's done she's done ted talks she's just been. Fantastic so. And she just start track you can't beat you you cathleen i went out that's just kind of full of went yeah. And then and then we'll have to all over the planetary society who is the hardest working uh. Person in in space media she said as you said you sent off to need you hospital she will she will produce images that nobody else got has and she just just a fantastic job so. Groovy okay well i think we're um we're kind of reaching the end so when. We'll just see any and where we at right now uh well right now we're waiting for the u. s. congress to get it back together so barring that it's gonna keep going until twenty seventeen and allow this to see that well the next supposed to us right and that's six more years. From a recording that. And that's like for sure by that time the how to do your but it it's well it did nothing's for sure they have to look and see how the space craft is doing how the space cost is d hey thanks. But like you said it if there's the slightest tend to something going wrong they're gonna pull the plug before it. How is to you just can't risk a mission that you know has bacteria on it potentially landing on tighten where as we've talked about an earlier episodes there is cans of. Not statistically certain that he said as it is that there's potentially bacteria there so just no risks allowed. Yeah yeah. Alright well thanks a lot and well that was great we'll talk to you and actually we're gonna do the ah the third party mysteries redo the. A discussion of was it christy on weekends right yep play yeah awesome alright we'll talk to you know please sounds great touchy later facing. This has been astronomy casts but we quit backspace journey through because most journals and transcripts for every episode are available on our website check it out at astronomy cast dot com. You can send us any comments questions or p backed info astronomy cash dot com weary every email to show the nonprofit educational resource provided by phrase it came from doctor family gay. 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