I don’t know why I’ve never attended a PlanetFest before given my interest in space exploration, but I attended my first one over the weekend. PlanetFest is an event held by The Planetary Society (TPS) to coincide with significant planetary exploration events. PlanetFest ’21 had the theme “To Mars and Back Again” to celebrate the arrival at Mars of the Perseverance Rover this Thursday, February 18; the Hope spacecraft from the UAE on February 9; and the Tianwen-1 spacecraft from China on February 10. It was a weekend of learning about space missions from experts, sharing stories, celebrating humankind’s accomplishments in space so far, and discussing what we still don’t know about Mars and the Solar System, with nods to Star Trek and other science fiction along the way.
“Sailing the Light” – Premiere Watch Party
Before the morning keynote, The Planetary Society premiered “Sailing the Light”, a 30-minute documentary about LightSail 2, on YouTube. I posted a link to the video on my Facebook timeline only to find out that the video is no longer available. The video is fascinating and inspirational – if you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend doing so.
Saturday Keynote
In the keynote “Mars Mind Meld: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Mars”, TPS president Bethany Ehlmann gave an overview of exciting things we know about Mars. As one of the three planets in our Solar System that are approximately in the habitable “Goldilocks” zone, we are still trying to find out if Mars was ever habitable and if there could be modern life on Mars.
Viking 2 Lander in 1979
- We learned from Viking Lander 2 that Mars could have frost on it. Subsequent missions have shown that Mars has both water ice and water ice clouds. Fogs have been detected in the Valles Marineris canyon system.
- Mars’ surface environment is never stable. It is often more habitable than it is right now, even recently (cosmologically speaking)!
- The Spirit rover discovered salts on Mars. Microorganisms live in salts on Earth, so could there be some on Mars? In addition, organic molecules have been found in mudstones examined by Curiosity.
The Perseverance rover scheduled to land on Mars on February 18 is designed to save samples of Mars rocks and soil in a canister to return to Earth later. This sample will add additional knowledge about the habitability of Mars.
Panel: “The Big Questions: Everything We Don’t Know About Mars”
Planetary scientists Sarah Stewart Johnson from Georgetown University, Britney Schmidt from Georgia Tech, and Ken Williford from JPL discussed the burning questions driving Mars science and exploration today. The missions to Mars have gone from “follow the water” to “look for signs of life”. Some questions:
- Is there life? Was there life? Was there a separate genesis? If there wasn’t life on Mars, why not?
- What is at the poles of Mars? Are there any organisms in the ice there?
- Where did the magnetic field go? When did it disappear?
- Why are the top half and the bottom half of Mars so different? Why the dichotomy? Was there a great northern ocean?
Beyond Mars: Exploring Other Worlds
There are 5 ocean worlds in the Solar System that have been discovered so far (and a few other possibilities): Jupiter’s moons Europa and Ganymede, Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus, and Neptune’s moon Triton. There are missions planned to go to two of these: Europa and Titan.
- The Europa Clipper mission is aiming for launch readiness by 2024. It will not be looking for life, but habitability, which has 4 criteria: water, chemistry, energy, and time.
- Dragonfly is a Titan Mission, the fourth New Frontiers mission. Dragonfly will launch in 2026 and arrive at Titan in 2034. It is a multi-rotor vehicle that will fly over the surface of Titan looking for prebiotic chemical processes in an effort to teach scientists about the origin of life itself.
Another key to understanding planet formation in our solar system is small body exploration, exploring asteroids and comets. Asteroids and comets are thought to retain a record of conditions in the early Solar System. Several missions are underway to explore small bodies, including:
- OSIRIS-REx (Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security – Regolith Explorer) launched in 2016 and arrived at the near-Earth asteroid Bennu in 2018. It is returning a sample to Earth in 2023.
- DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is launching in the summer of 2021, heading to the binary asteroid Didymos. DART is a planetary defense-driven test of technologies for preventing an impact of Earth by a hazardous asteroid.
- Lucy is the first mission to the Trojan asteroids which orbit the sun in the same path as Jupiter. Launching in October 2021, Lucy will complete a 12-year journey to 8 different asteroids, one main belt asteroid and 7 Trojans. The first spacecraft to visit so many different destinations, Lucy will show us the diversity of primordial bodies that helped build the planets.
- The Psyche mission is planned to launch in 2022 to travel to the metal asteroid Psyche that orbits the Sun between Mars and Jupiter.
Let’s not forget the Artemis mission to take people back to the surface of the Moon in 2024! It will be NASA’s first mission to the Moon since 1972. There are currently 7 planned robotic missions to the Moon between now and then, including 2 later this year. A key research interest is how asteroids and other collisions affect the Earth and the Moon. On Earth, the surface is constantly changing due to plate tectonics and volcanism, so the planet’s history is lost. This is not so on the Moon, which makes it an ideal place to look for answers to that question.
Other Sessions I Attended
Tools for Discovery: Doing Science on Mars – A panel of Mars scientists talking about the scientific instruments that Mars missions use.
Mars Images: Putting the Red Planet in Focus – A panel of Mars scientists and engineers shared their favorite images of Mars – 15 images coming from Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, Spirt and Opportunity, the Philae Lander on its way to the Rosetta comet, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s HiRISE camera, and Curiosity.
How to Win Space Friends and Influence People – A panel of science communicators discussed what works and what doesn’t work to get people excited about space science and exploration. Showing passion for the subject is key. How am I doing?
Backyard Astronomy: Seeing the Cosmos for Yourself – Bruce Betts, Chief Scientist of TPS, started with tips for beginning backyard astronomer. (You can learn more at The Planetary Society’s Astronomy for Beginners webpage.) Cheyenne Polius, the President and Co-Found of the Saint Lucia National Astronomy Association, talked about how to choose a beginner telescope. Justin Foley, a Mars 2020 Testbed Engineer at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, talked about astrophotography and how to take space pictures. Finally, Geovanni Samoza, the Outreach Coordinator for TPS, gave a rousing talk about how to share the night sky with others, particularly with kids’ groups.
A Conversation: Behind the Scenes of Space TV – Robert (Bob) Picardo, the actor who played the Emergency Medical Hologram on Voyager and a TPS Board Member, had a conversation with Brannon Braga, a TV writer on such shows as Star Trek Voyager, The Orville, and COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey. The entertaining discussion ranged from how Bob tested for the role of Neelix and didn’t want to be the holographic doctor at first because he didn’t fully understand the character to advice from Brannon on how to create suspense in weekly TV episodes. They both agreed that the future depicted in Star Trek was not an unrealistic utopian dream but an optimistic future where technology ennobled people to live better lives. (As a bonus, TPS has a video on YouTube of A Conversation: Star Trek’s Robert Picardo and Kate Mulgrew.)
Meet and Greet with The Planetary Society – Leaders of TPS reflected on why they’re involved in TPS and what discoveries they hope to see in their lifetime.
The Next Giant Leap: Sending Humans to Mars – Casey Dreier, TPS Chief Advocate & Senior Space Policy Adviser, interviewing Rick Davis from NASA about the challenges of getting humans to Mars and how we plan to overcome them. NASA is focused on many components for the round-trip human journey to Mars: Heavy lift launch vehicle, near-Earth crew vehicle, Mars Transfer Vehicle, Solar-Electric Cargo Tug, Communication network, Crew and Cargo lander, Reconnaissance, pressurized rover, habitat/science lab, Mars Ascent Vehicle (for return), and a Mars Surface Space Suit.
Finale
The two-day PlanetFest ’21 wrapped up with “7 More Minutes of Terror: The Drama of Landing a Rover on Mars”. Mat Kaplan, Planetary Radio Host and Producer for TPS, interviewed Rob Manning, JPL Chief Engineer, about what to expect when Perseverance lands on Mars on Thursday. JPL has a video about this on YouTube: 7 Minutes to Mars: NASA’s Perseverance Rover Attempts Most Dangerous Landing Yet.
On February 18, the Perseverance rover is scheduled to land on Mars. The Planetary Society is hosting a watch party starting at 11:30 AM PST. I’ll be watching. How about you?
