Countdown to the Moon day at the Air & Space Museum

Yesterday I spend the day manning a table at the National Air & Space Museum as a "Lunar Expert" to help them celebrate the 40th anniversary of the day that Apollo 11 launched. According to the little counter they gave me, over 800 people stopped by my booth to learn about "Moon dust". I had a bunch of images of soil grains from my own research, plus some lunar soil simulants and a handful of 3D analglyphs donated from a colleague at Lehigh (which were clearly the hit, man people really love those 3D images). I love doing these public outreach things, but I have to say I am always amazed by both the sophistication and the sheer ignorance of some of the questions I get asked.

A few of the things I was asked yesterday:

Is this real Moon dust? - referring to the two jars of soil simulants I brought (yeah, I'm sure NASA would have no problem with me leaving half a pound of lunar soil on an table in the middle of a museum full of people).

Was Night at the Museum II filmed here? - turns out it was, I didn't know that at the time though, and also, I'm not an information booth. There was also a question about the new Transformers movie, although I'm pretty sure that one was not filmed in the museum.

Is Moon dust radioactive? - I get this question from time to time and I don't understand where that comes from or why people would think that.

Have we figured out any good uses for Moon dust yet? - There were at least a dozen people who asked me some version of this question, because apparently there is no reason to go back to the Moon unless we can mine it for something. I tried to turn their question into a discussion of in situ resource utilization and explain how the soil contains all the elements we need to survive and make rocket fuel, so if we can figure out how to extract it we can "live off the land," I think that worked with about half the question askers, the others just seemed disappointed, apparently "oxygen" was not the answer they were looking for.

Did you collect these samples yourself? - I swear, I'm not making this up, there were two people, two, adults, at separate times, that genuinely thought I might have gone to the Moon myself and brought back my soil. One seamed really taken aback when I said that no one had been to the Moon in my lifetime, the other was like, "oh yeah, that's right". Wow, it's interactions like that that really scare the bejeezus out of me. How do these people function in normal life? It reminds me of a hairstylist I once had that thought the Sun and the Moon were the same thing, it just got dimmer at night (true story).

Not to worry though, for every left field question, there were plenty of bright and curious types of all ages with good questions. There was one guy who stayed for like half an hour just firing one question after the other, he was awesome, he kept apologizing to the gathering crowd for monopolizing me and they were like, no, we're learning so much from your questions, keep going. And the kid who was allergic to dust and wanted to know if he would be allergic to Moon dust too - that's a great question. (For the record, probably not, most terrestrial dust allergies are due to dust mites, which lunar soil doesn't have, but at least two people during Apollo one astronaut and one flight surgeon, experienced "hayfever-like" symptoms after being exposed to lunar dust.)

All in all, it was a good time. The museum was crowded, people mostly seemed interested and engaged. This was the first "Moon day" the museum has done, they normally do a "Mars day" but made an exception this year for the anniversary. I hope they don't wait until the next bit anniversary to do it again. I mean, Mars is cool and all, but come on, give the Moon some love too!

LCROSS impact might upset the aliens

According to this guy, the LCROSS mission which launched last week (That's it in the picture. I was there! It was awesome!) and will impact into the Lunar South Pole on October 9th of this year (mark your calendars), breaks international law, and may rile up the Moon's alien colonists.

I've got to tell you, the thing that bothers me most about this article is not the ridiculousness of the whole alien thing, it's that he talks about this supposed alien base being on the "dark" side of the Moon. People, the Moon doesn't have a "dark" side! It has a near side and a far side (or "backside" but I've been told that because "backside" had other connotations I should avoid using it). The far side has a two-week long night, followed by a two-week long day, just like the side we get to see.

Also, and I realize this is a minor point in the scope of his overall arguments, but the US never signed the Moon Treaty, and therefore, even if LCROSS did violate it (which it doesn't), it still wouldn't matter.

The Great Moon Rock Heist

So, this article came out about a month ago now, I'm a little behind (see previous post), but I just couldn't let it slip by.

It's a rather entertaining read. It's the story of how an intern, Thad, stole some Moon rocks from JSC back in 2002, or I should say, it's Thad's version of the story. Although Thad and I never crossed paths, I too was an intern in building 31 and then a grad student and then a postdoc, and I can assure you that nearly every word of this account is totally fabricated, with the possible exception of this, my favorite line, "Sometime between the heist and its resolution, Tiffany and Thad arranged the Moon rocks on a bed—and had sex amongst them." Ugh, the contamination! Not to mention, that can't have been comfortable.

The truth is that the safe Thad and his girlfriend stole was from a scientist's office not the vault, and the altruistic spin he tries to put on his escapades, that he was taking "returned samples" that no longer had any scientific value is ludicrous. All of the Moon rocks have scientific value, even samples that have been previously studied, and these particular samples had been allocated to the safe's owner for use in specific experiments.

Thad has served his sentence and is apparently now trying to get a book deal. I wish him luck. No, on second though, I don't. What an ass.

Apollo Moon Hoax Mythbusters tonight!

Don't forget to watch, or set the Tivo, for Mythbusters tonight and find out if we really did fake the Moonlandings!

Star Trek is what's killing the space program!?

According to Buzz Aldrin, the lack of interest among "young people" in the space program is due to "all the shows where they beam people around and things like that" because "they have made young people think that that is what the space program should be doing. It's not realistic."

Wow, I'm thinking that would come as quite a surprise to the hundreds of NASA scientists and engineers (myself included) that cite Star Trek in particular and science fiction in general as one of the main things that got them interested in space.

Send your name to the Moon

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter team would like to invite you to send your name to the Moon onboard the LRO spacecraft:

http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php

Unfortunately, it's just on the orbiter, so it looks like your name won't actually make it to the lunar surface (unless it crashes). They should totally put the names on the LCROSS part that is supposed to crash, that would be way cooler.

My name is already en route to the asteroid belt on board DAWN and it crashed into a comet on board Deep Impact, and I think I may be headed to Mercury on MESSENGER too, so I'm making some progress on spreading a little bit of me throughout the solar system.

New Painting

This piece, titled "Not Quite HD" is my homage to one of the first HD images released by JAXA from the Kaguya spacecraft.

The original can be found here, along with some really cool movies of the Earth rising and setting over the Moon.

If you like my art, you can find more here.

This made me laugh today...

The 12 days of Christmas, NASA style (courtesy NASAwatch)

HDTV movies of the Moon from Kaguya

The Japanese Kaguya (formerly Selene) mission has captured the first high-def movies from the Moon. Pretty impressive stuff, even if it does lose some of that high-def impact when it's a tiny little movie on your computer screen. Still pretty though.

The captions are all in Japanese, but the movie consists of two sequences:

The first sequence is a movie flying over the western region of Oceanus Procellarum. Starting point is approx. 25 N, 275 - 282 E and ending point is 49N, 275 - 283 E. The contrast of mare and highland are clearly recognized.

The second sequence is a scene flying over the north pole region. Starting point is approx. 66 N, 274 - 288 E and ending point is 87 N, 26 - 161 E. Kaguya is flying from the northern part of Oceanus Procellarum to the north pole. As it is in high latitude, incidence angle becomes lower and it makes shadows longer. Thanks to lower angle, we can see craters and other cobbly surface features very clearly.

These sequence captured on 31 Oct, 2007 (JST) with altitude of approximately 100 kilometers.

Congrats to our Japanese friends!

New Paintings

I finished three new paintings this week (well, 5 if you count the triptych as 3 separate ones, but that's not really fair). Here are the new ones, if you'd like to see more, check out my website.

NASA to form Lunar Science Institute

According to NASAwatch, Alan Stern announced at the DPS (Division for Planetary Sciences) meeting yesterday that NASA plans to create a NASA Lunar Science Institute (NLSI) patterned on the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).

The initial selection would be of 4 to 5 lead teams at a cost of $1-2 million each, and like the NAI, the NSLI would be managed by NASA Ames Research Center.

This is pretty exciting news, and in conjunction with the new LASER (Lunar Advanced Science and Exploration Research) R&A program and last year's LSSO (Lunar Sortie Science Opportunities) program, the participating scientist program for LRO, not to mention an increase in lunar-related grants through several of NASA's other R&A lines (PGG, Cosmochem, PIDDP), the lunar community is sitting pretty good right now.

Which is important, and well timed, because a large percentage of the lunar community hail from the Apollo era, and frankly are approaching, or have already reached, retirement age. By the time we get back to the Moon in (theoretically) 2018, they will be gone and we will be in desperate need of a few good lunar scientists. Now, scientists don't just sprout out of nowhere, it takes a good 10 years of training (grad school plus postdocs) to produce a decent scientist, so by priming the system now with a small investment in R&A, NASA is actually showing some forethought and is right on schedule to maintain a viable lunar community for the next era of exploration. Way to go NASA (or, rather, Alan Stern), it's nice to see someone thinking beyond the next election cycle.

Happy Apollo 11 Anniversary

Today marks the 38th anniversary of the day that humankind first set foot on the Moon (unless you're Australian, apparently they mark that on the 21st). Here at JSC they are celebrating with a Grand Reopening of the Saturn V facility and a sneak preview of the movie "In the Shadow of the Moon" which I am really looking forward to seeing.

Agency wide, NASA is referring to today as the inaugural "First Footprints" celebration, an annual commemoration of one of humankind's most amazing and important accomplishments. I like that, I'm surprised that we haven't made more of a big deal of this in the past. I hope it catches on.

Nuke the Moon?

This guy has some pretty convincing evidence for why we should nuke the Moon.

What is up with the Lunar Robotic Program?

In the beginning, the plan was to go to the Moon, first with robots, then with people. An extensive precursor program (the Robotic Lunar Exploration Program, or RLEP - pronounced R-Lep) was planned following the model put forth by the Apollo program with it's Lunar Orbiter and Ranger missions. There was to be first an orbiter - the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), which is on track and should launch in 2008 - followed by a lander, probably to a polar location, maybe even a permanently shadowed region, followed by another orbiter, then another lander.

Then people started doing the math, and realized we couldn't afford all that and it was pared down to the LRO and 1 lander. The program's named was also changed for no apparent reason from RLEP, to the Lunar Precursor and Robotic Program (LPRP) and the program office was moved to Marshall (from Ames, and before that Goddard).

Along the way, cost estimates for the lander started to balloon from an initial New Frontier's Class mission to something in the several billion dollar range from the rumors I heard. So the lander was scrapped all together and we were told it was not needed, as Scott Horowitz, NASA's exploration chief, made perfectly clear at the Lunar Science Meeting in Tempe a couple months ago when he said that all he really needs is "a damn good map," which LRO will provide.

With no "program" to speak of, the LPRP program office at Marshall was to be shut down and management of LRO (and it's tag-along package LCROSS) was to be moved to HQs. But then Congress got involved, or specifically Sen Shelby (R-Al), who wanted to keep a little piece of the Moon in his backyard and the 32 jobs that go with it (although in reality, none of those people would have been laid off, just reassigned to other duties). Sen Shelby was apparently able to convince Sen. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Rep. Mollohan (D-W.Va.), who respectively chair the Senate and House appropriations panels with NASA oversight, that this was important and last month they wrote a letter to Administrator Griffin proclaiming their displeasure over the closing of the Marshall office and directed $20M "be provided to continue planning for a potential LPRP mission during the remainder of the year." (See the recent article in Science.)

Mr Griffin response reiterated the "all we need is a damn good map" mantra:

“I do not need a robotic lander to reduce risks for the human landings,” Griffin said. “Everybody who has carefully looked at that has said you don’t need it.”

Griffin said such a mission, while “it would be nice to have,” is not necessary. “Right now, the budget is such that I have to focus on what’s necessary,” he said, adding that the decision to cancel the lander was not taken lightly.

“The lander wasn’t the first thing I removed from the program. It was the last thing,” he said.

It's not immediately clear how NASA will respond to the congressional directive, or more importantly, what they are going to do with that $20M, since there is no sign that they are going to change their mind about sending a lander.

I have a few problems with this situation.

First of all, I'd really like to see a lander. For science reasons obviously, but also because I'm not convinced we know enough about the conditions at the poles to start putting up a permanent base there. In particular, the electrostatic conditions in a place like the rim of Shackleton crater (the currently favored site) which is always near the terminator, may make life very hard to deal with for the astronauts and their equipment, or maybe it will be fine, but we don't really know and a lander could definitely help us find out. There are many other unknowns and risks that a lander could help us reduce, biological experiments on the reactivity of the soil and the radiation environment, for example. Deciding whether these things are "necessary" or just "useful" is above my pay grade, as they say, but if it were up to me, I would say necessary.

Secondly, I think it's ridiculous that Congress is trying to dictate to NASA how it should be run at this level. Oversight is one thing, I am a firm believer in oversight, but this is not oversight, it's practically an earmark. NASA so strapped for cash right now that we are darn near begging in the streets, and now they are going to have to cough up $20M for a project that is never going to go anywhere.

I realize that many of you are probably thinking about now that my problem #2 contradicts my problem #1 - I want NASA to fund the stupid lander, but I'm mad at Congress for forcing them to keep the program office open. What I really want is for Congress to fund NASA at an appropriate level for them to accomplish all the things that Congress has asked them to do and to let NASA figure out the best way to do it. And I want NASA to stop basing their decisions on whether or not we can afford it and instead decide the best course of action and do it, even if it takes a little longer. NASA often uses the phrase "pay-as-you-go" but they don't believe it. Of course, Congress keeps putting timetables on things (Ahh, Congress and their timetables), like phase-out of the shuttle and when the CEV has to be ready that force NASA's hand. So they are both in my doghouse.

Going to the Moon on a budget is hard, but going to the Moon unprepared will be disastrous.

This made me laugh today

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOyQ3nTDgCs

A parody of Ron Howard's Apollo 13 that wonders what Thanksgiving might be like at Gene Kranz's (Ed Harris from Apollo 13) house, especially when things go terribly, but familiarly wrong.

It's hilarious:

- "What did you do?"

- "Nothing, I stirred the gravy."

What are we going to do on the Moon?

I get that question a lot. Haven't we already been there? Why do we need to go back? Don't we already know everything?

Here is a list of 181 things that NASA has figured out that we can do on the Moon, not that we are necessarily going to do all of these things, but there's 181 of them, we're certainly going to make it through some of them.

Moon Dust on NPR

A discussion of Moon dust was featured on NPR today, including a mention of the meeting I'm going to next week at Ames (aka The Big Dust Up).

Going Metric on the Moon - update

So NASA apparently made the official announcement yesterday that we are definitely going metric on the Moon. Space.com also has some comments on the topic.

This made me laugh today...

courtesy: http://xkcd.com/c202.html

Going Metric on the Moon

It was announced last month at the 2nd Exploration Conference in Houston that we are going to use metric units on the Moon. This was a big announcement, a decision that was not made easily or lightly, one that will have far reaching ramifications.

Surprised? If you are a scientist, you are probably shocked to hear that NASA is not already using SI units. If you are an engineer, you're probably not at all surprised. And if you are neither, you probably don't think much about units unless you're in Europe and trying to figure out what outfit to wear if the daily high is 23 degrees C.

The Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988 actually requires (with certain exceptions) all Federal Agencies to use the metric system in their procurement, grants and other business-related activities by the end of 1992 (that's 15 years ago!), and yet NASA is still measuring things in feet and inches much of the time. This act, which ammended the Metric Conversion Act of 1975, was yet another attempt by the Federal government to coax America towards Metrication by leading by example. Unfortunately, it turns out that NASA and it's contractors are just as resistant to change as the rest of the American people.

What is wrong with us? We all know the metric system is better. As a scientist, I use the SI units all the time and yet, if someone asks how tall I am - I'm 5'4", if you want that in meters, I need to get out a calculator. I remember the big push towards metric when I was a kid; my brother and I even had this great board game (Metricat10n) that taught us all the SI prefixes. But it all kinda fizzled out didn't it?

For NASA, one of the issues is the mixing of the two systems. Some things are done in metric, some are still in English units. That can lead to serious problems like the highly publicized and embarrassing loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1998 where NASA and most of the contractors worked in metric units but one contractor, Lockheed Martin, provided data in pound force seconds instead of newton seconds. Oops.

I was not party to the discussions leading up to last month's big decision about the Moon, but the rumors I heard suggested that several of NASA major contractors were strongly against metric. Switching is too expensive. Period. If forced, they would do it, but they would only make changes "on the back end" - i.e. they would do everything in English units and then add a line of code at the end that would convert the values into SI. Extra lines of code, of course, add extra risk, something NASA really hates.

I'm very happy that NASA has decided to stick to their guns on this one. I hope the changes are not just cosmetic, I hope they really push the contractors to do more than add code. The transistion may be difficult, but it will be worth it in the long run, it will ultimately be safer, and more efficient, for us, and for our international partners (if we're serious about having them), and for the poor astronaut who only has to carry one set of wrenches when he heads out the airlock to fix that stupid solar panel again.