Speaker 1: Hey, or hey, I have a robotics question for you.
Speaker 1: All right, Daniel, for the last time, I'm not gonna
Speaker 1: build you a robotic graduate student. That's just unethical. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: I think my grad students are pretty happy and I
Speaker 1: don't even have to program them to say that. But
Speaker 1: my actual question is what's your favorite way to land
Speaker 1: a robot on an extra terrestrial surface? That's fun. Now,
Speaker 1: personally I haven't done it myself, but let's see what
Speaker 1: we do. Have several options that we've done before. For example,
Speaker 1: we've slow descended on Mars with rockets, and we've also
Speaker 1: used parachutes and air bags to land. That's simple but effective.
Speaker 1: And you know, you gotta give props to the sky crane,
Speaker 1: you know, like the vehicle that use rockets and crane
Speaker 1: to lower the rower on the Mars. That one totally awesome.
Speaker 1: It's like science fiction. But you guys thought about you know,
Speaker 1: something simpler, like you know, a pogo stick. That's a
Speaker 1: great idea. I'll bounce it off of Naha. I am
Speaker 1: more handmade cartoonist and the creator of PhD comments. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Daniel. I'm a particle physicist and my son has
Speaker 1: the neighborhood pogo stick record. Oh nice, are you proud?
Speaker 1: What's his record? How many times to Kenny bounce? Or
Speaker 1: how high Kenny bounce? No, it's a number of times
Speaker 1: you can bounce without falling off, and his number is
Speaker 1: somewhere in the thousand. I wouldn't say I'm proud as
Speaker 1: much as impressed, because it's not really about like physical endurance.
Speaker 1: It's mostly about mental endurance, like at some point you
Speaker 1: just get bored and step off. So I don't know
Speaker 1: if you've gotten the memo, Daniel, but as a parents
Speaker 1: should always say you're proud. I'm so proud of my
Speaker 1: son's dedication to the pogo sticks championship. I think you're
Speaker 1: trying to say you're shocked. But welcome to our podcast.
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge Explain the Universe, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio in which we think about things all around
Speaker 1: the universe, from in our neighborhood to the distant reaches
Speaker 1: of space. We talked about the origins of the universe.
Speaker 1: We talk about the end of the universe. We talk
Speaker 1: about what it's all made out of. We think that
Speaker 1: wonder belongs to everyone, and that includes your curiosity about
Speaker 1: what's going on in the universe, how it all works,
Speaker 1: and what it all means. Yeah, we like to talk
Speaker 1: about the big things like the cosmos, and also the
Speaker 1: small things like the physics of pogo sticks or maybe
Speaker 1: landing on other surfaces, and how pogo sticks can actually
Speaker 1: help us explore the universe and understand where everything came from. Yeah,
Speaker 1: pogo sticks are very versatile and they're kind of an
Speaker 1: engineering marvel. Do you think about it? I haven't actually
Speaker 1: thought about it. What is the history of the invention
Speaker 1: of the pogo stick? You have that at your fingertips.
Speaker 1: I don't have Wikipedia on me right now. Unfortunately, we'll
Speaker 1: wait for the endorsement and sponsorship from the Big pogo stick.
Speaker 1: Are you saying it's not one of the fundamental machines
Speaker 1: that you learned about when you become an engineer. You
Speaker 1: have to lever the polly the pogo stick. I think
Speaker 1: you have to. Actually, you mentioned my thesis. My thesis
Speaker 1: did feature a pogostick for real. There you go. It's
Speaker 1: everywhere in science. It's not just a child's toy. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I know. You can get you a pH d from
Speaker 1: Stanford if you work hard enough at it. In fact,
Speaker 1: I think I had to buy a pogo stick. Oh
Speaker 1: my god, Daniel, you're bringing back so many memories. I
Speaker 1: had to buy a pogo stick for my actual doctoral thesis.
Speaker 1: So did you get to toys r us to buy
Speaker 1: equipment for your pH d from Stanford? Thanks? So, I
Speaker 1: think I did. I know, I must have. Where else
Speaker 1: can you get a pogo stick? I don't know, but
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure there's no equipment at the LHC that
Speaker 1: was purchased at a toy store. But you know, I'm
Speaker 1: not a Yeah, it's a big place. You never know, Daniel, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But anyways, that we are talking about technology today and
Speaker 1: in nearing and specifically how to land a robot on
Speaker 1: another surface, that's right. And we're talking about engineering and
Speaker 1: science working hand in hand solving incredible technical problems to
Speaker 1: help answer deep and fundamental questions about the nature of
Speaker 1: our solar system and the world we live in. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because it's pretty fun to look at the universe through telescopes,
Speaker 1: but it's even more fun when you get to go
Speaker 1: out there and bring back samples. Yeah, it's so tactiles.
Speaker 1: They get to have, like rocks from Mars or rocks
Speaker 1: from the Moon, actually in your lab where you can
Speaker 1: zap them with lasers or do all sorts of crazy
Speaker 1: stuff to them. It's much more fun than just looking
Speaker 1: through a telescope and wondering, what is that thing? It's
Speaker 1: kind of shiny, and so there's a whole series of
Speaker 1: really crazy, amazing robotic missions planned to bring stuff back
Speaker 1: so we can study it here on Earth now, Daniel,
Speaker 1: We've landed robots in lots of places in the Solar System,
Speaker 1: and we've done big round rock called the Moon, and
Speaker 1: we've landed robots in a big ground rock called Mars,
Speaker 1: and we've landed robots in a ice rock shooting through
Speaker 1: our solar system. Comment, but we're not done yet landing
Speaker 1: things on things in our Solar system. We're not gonna
Speaker 1: be done until we've landed a thing on every kind
Speaker 1: of thing. That's right exactly. We are interested in understanding
Speaker 1: not just the planets of our solar system, not just
Speaker 1: the comments, but the asteroids. The asteroids hold answers to
Speaker 1: questions that we think will help us understand how their
Speaker 1: solar systems formed. They're basically little time capsules untouched since
Speaker 1: the formation of the planets and the Sun. Four and
Speaker 1: a half billion years ago? So did be On the program,
Speaker 1: we'll be asking the question can we land a robot
Speaker 1: on an asteroid? And the bonus question is and can
Speaker 1: we scoop up parts of that asteroid and bring them
Speaker 1: back to Earth? Yeah? And I guess the answer, Daniel
Speaker 1: is um, yes and no, because technically, did we land
Speaker 1: on an asteroid? Or maybe yes and then no? I
Speaker 1: mean if the fopoco stick us like yes and no
Speaker 1: and yes and no and yes and no? Right right,
Speaker 1: all right, now, this is an interesting question, and it's
Speaker 1: kind of timely, right because there is right now today
Speaker 1: a mission out in space trying to land on an
Speaker 1: asteroid and bring some of it back to Earth. That's right.
Speaker 1: There is a space mission we sent up a few
Speaker 1: years ago and it's been orbiting an asteroid for a
Speaker 1: little while, and just yesterday, as we record this program,
Speaker 1: it descended to the surface. Yeah. This mission is called
Speaker 1: Osiris REX. Now, Daniel, is this NASA or is this
Speaker 1: the European Space Agency who sent this up? This is NASA.
Speaker 1: This is an American project and has a pretty awesome
Speaker 1: name Osiris REX, although you know it's a pretty tortured acronym.
Speaker 1: What does it stand? For osiris, REX stands for origins,
Speaker 1: Spectral Interpretation, Resource identification. Security regularly explore. Oh, man, that
Speaker 1: sounds like like a word salad, like a stream of
Speaker 1: consciousness acronym. I know, but it's a pretty awesome name.
Speaker 1: It sounds a little bit, you know, like an Egyptian
Speaker 1: god or a superhero or something. So it's got some
Speaker 1: mystery thing. How many meetings it took to get that acronym,
Speaker 1: I don't know. But as usual, we were curious, is
Speaker 1: this something people are hearing about? Is this something only
Speaker 1: we are excited about, or is all of humanity at
Speaker 1: the edge of their seats waiting to hear back about
Speaker 1: this asteroid lantic? It was usual Daniel went out there
Speaker 1: into the wild of the internet to ask people, can
Speaker 1: we land a probe on an asteroid? Think about it
Speaker 1: for a second. Have you heard the news about the
Speaker 1: robot landing on an asteroid this week? And if so,
Speaker 1: what would you answer. Here's what people had to say.
Speaker 1: I think we can land a probe on an asteroid,
Speaker 1: and I think it's happened before. I can't remember the
Speaker 1: name of the probe on the mission without looking on
Speaker 1: the internet, but I remember something about it. Landing and
Speaker 1: unexpectedly bouncing and it bounds like a mile high, which
Speaker 1: was a problem, but then it did eventually land and
Speaker 1: it was okay. Um. I guess it's very difficult, but
Speaker 1: I don't see why not if you have the right technology.
Speaker 1: I think the short answer is yes, because we have
Speaker 1: done it in Japan had the ambles do if I remember,
Speaker 1: And also NASA has a probe in a non route
Speaker 1: right now that will land on an asteroid in near future.
Speaker 1: We did land the probe on a comet, so I
Speaker 1: would assume that, uh, if we could do that, we
Speaker 1: can end the probe on an asteroid. Mm hmm. It
Speaker 1: might be difficult because I think they move pretty fast
Speaker 1: and are really small, but I definitely think that. You know,
Speaker 1: it might be a tough engineering challenge, but I think
Speaker 1: it's possible. Yes, I believe we definitely can. That's gonna
Speaker 1: be tough, and you have to get the trajectories correct,
Speaker 1: but I think you definitely cared. I have no idea.
Speaker 1: I don't I don't know what an asteroid is because
Speaker 1: I always mix all the different culturalism of still are
Speaker 1: things that there are, and I think there was an
Speaker 1: approbe that collided with some stellar object. I don't remember
Speaker 1: if it was on asteroid. All right, it's as people
Speaker 1: are pretty confident in human engineers here. You're like, we've
Speaker 1: done it before. We've landed on a moving flying ice rock.
Speaker 1: Surely we can do it on a regular old and
Speaker 1: it's a pretty impressive feat. You know, the Solar System
Speaker 1: is huge in comparison to these objects. So you're gonna
Speaker 1: shoot a bullet out from Earth to this other tiny
Speaker 1: object and matched speed. It's really pretty impressive. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, yeah, we've done it before, so we're capable
Speaker 1: of these really amazing technological feats. And you know, I'm
Speaker 1: saying we hear very broadly because of course I have
Speaker 1: no participation in this. I get no credit in it.
Speaker 1: I'm just sort of like in the audience, going, wow, humanity,
Speaker 1: we rock. Well, you're you're using the super royal we
Speaker 1: like all of humanity or do you mean like the
Speaker 1: subset of humanity that works for science? What do you think?
Speaker 1: What do you think you're using? In your head, I'm
Speaker 1: definitely in the audience here. I'm not involved in this
Speaker 1: community at all. My jaw hits the floor just as
Speaker 1: much as your average seven year old space lover, and
Speaker 1: so I'm definitely just in the audience cheering these folks
Speaker 1: on and being glad that they're doing it. Well. All right,
Speaker 1: well let's get into it, Daniel. First of all, I
Speaker 1: guess why land on an asteroid? I mean, I can
Speaker 1: see Mars, that's pretty cool. The moon is right here,
Speaker 1: A comment that us super cool? But why landing an asteroid?
Speaker 1: Isn't it just like a big rock in space. It
Speaker 1: is a sort of a big rock in space. And
Speaker 1: one reason to land on an asteroid is that it's
Speaker 1: a bit of a time capsule. We think that the
Speaker 1: way the Solar System came together about four and a
Speaker 1: half billion years ago is that you had a huge
Speaker 1: cloud of gas and dust, these timey little bits, and
Speaker 1: then maybe something shocked them, like a nearby supernova went
Speaker 1: off and started the process of gravity gathering everything together.
Speaker 1: And that took a few hundred thousand years or so,
Speaker 1: and you know, the Sun form and planets start to form,
Speaker 1: and then the leftover bits turned into asteroids or comments
Speaker 1: or whatever is out there in the Kuiper Belt and
Speaker 1: the cloud. But these leftover bits have basically been inert
Speaker 1: since then. It's not like the Earth where there's like
Speaker 1: flowing rocks under the ground and all sorts of chemistry
Speaker 1: is happening. It's basically just clumped together and froze and
Speaker 1: it's been unchanged ever since then. And so if we
Speaker 1: have questions about, like, you know, what is the basic
Speaker 1: chemistry of the ingredients of the Solar system, then these
Speaker 1: rocks can answer those questions. I see. So it's like
Speaker 1: a snapshot of the rocks of the Solar system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like every other rock is sort of exposed or changed
Speaker 1: or moved around, but these are sort of still there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like a time capsule. You know, if somebody buried
Speaker 1: something four and a half billion years ago and you
Speaker 1: got to dig it up now and you could see, like,
Speaker 1: how are rocks four and a half billion years ago
Speaker 1: different from rocks today? Is there a different fraction of stuff?
Speaker 1: You know? Is there different ratios of isotopes? But most interestingly,
Speaker 1: like is the chemistry? Are there amino acids? There are
Speaker 1: there the basic elements we need for life? What do
Speaker 1: they look like? Are they different from the kinds of
Speaker 1: amino acids we have here on Earth? Or are there
Speaker 1: no amino acids? And most of them were fabricated here
Speaker 1: on Earth. It's really basic questions about the foundations of
Speaker 1: life and chemistry that can be answered by looking at asteroids.
Speaker 1: What wait, so an asteroid might have amino acids. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: amino acids, the basic elements that you need for like
Speaker 1: DNA and for life, are not just here on Earth.
Speaker 1: We found them in outer space. But the question is
Speaker 1: like how common are they? And there's lots of different
Speaker 1: amino acids, you know, are there just the amino acids
Speaker 1: that we need for life that are everywhere, or the
Speaker 1: amino acids we need for life fairly rare? You know.
Speaker 1: Another question is like here on Earth we only use
Speaker 1: left handed amino acids. That's like one particular configuration. Every
Speaker 1: amino acid comes in two varieties, the left handed in
Speaker 1: the right handed. They're just mirror images of each other.
Speaker 1: And here on Earth we only use the left handed ones.
Speaker 1: But we think that left and right should have been
Speaker 1: made in equal numbers by like you know, non biological
Speaker 1: chemical processes, but we don't really know. Maybe we'll look
Speaker 1: at these asteroids and find only left handed and acids,
Speaker 1: which is weird, or maybe we'll find left and right,
Speaker 1: or maybe mostly right and Earth is weird to mostly
Speaker 1: have left you know, it's it's fascinating the Solar system
Speaker 1: at some point might say, but I am left handed. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: you know, the universe particle physics is left handed in
Speaker 1: a weird way that we've talked about before. The weak
Speaker 1: force likes left handed particles and ignores right handed particles.
Speaker 1: So this this weird connection there where particle physics the
Speaker 1: universe at a low level is left handed, and then
Speaker 1: life is also at a much bigger scale left handed.
Speaker 1: And some people have suggested there might even be a connection,
Speaker 1: you know, like cosmic rays from space could have caused
Speaker 1: these things to become left handed amino acids or something.
Speaker 1: That's a whole area of speculation. It could also just
Speaker 1: be a coincidence. But we have basic questions about, you know,
Speaker 1: the left versus right handed nature these amino acids, and
Speaker 1: one way to answer them is to say, well, what
Speaker 1: was around a long long time ago? And that can
Speaker 1: be answered by asteroids. Cool. I guess the question is,
Speaker 1: you know, these rocks are floating out into space. So
Speaker 1: even if we get a sample and figure out what
Speaker 1: it's made out of, isn't it sort of like a
Speaker 1: random sample? How do we know where this asteroid has
Speaker 1: been or where it came from, or what part of
Speaker 1: the Solar system, you know what I mean, Like it's
Speaker 1: floating around in space. Yeah, you're right, and there could
Speaker 1: have been collisions and all sorts of stuff. So what
Speaker 1: you'd like to do a sample a lot of asteroids
Speaker 1: to get a big, broad distribution. You can't do that,
Speaker 1: And so you pick one, and you try to pick
Speaker 1: one that you think has had sort of a smaller
Speaker 1: amount of geological activity. And there's a variety of different
Speaker 1: kinds of asteroids that we can study them, and this
Speaker 1: one was picked because it has a really dark surface,
Speaker 1: and so we think that it's mostly just carbon and
Speaker 1: these are unlikely to have had a lot of geological activity,
Speaker 1: so they're called carbonaceous asteroids, and there's a few different kinds,
Speaker 1: and so we picked this one for that reason that
Speaker 1: we think it's a better time capsule. But there's actually
Speaker 1: another fun reason that we picked this particular asteroid. Wait,
Speaker 1: but first, which asteroid did we pick? Like? And how
Speaker 1: did we pick it? Yeah, we picked one. It's called
Speaker 1: Benu b E N N you And we picked it
Speaker 1: because we thought, you know, it's about the right size.
Speaker 1: It's about six hundred feet wide or so, so it's
Speaker 1: something we could land on. To me, we could approach.
Speaker 1: Is big enough that has its own gravity, that's like
Speaker 1: as big as an Empire State building something like that.
Speaker 1: It's about as tall as the Empire State building. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: But we picked this one also because there's a non
Speaker 1: zero chance that it's going to hit the Earth. What. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they project this thing forward into the future in about
Speaker 1: the year. There's a reasonable chance this thing is going
Speaker 1: to hit the earth, like not a big chance, but
Speaker 1: not a zero chance. Right now. We calculated to be
Speaker 1: about one in two thousand, seven hundred chance, which is
Speaker 1: about as high as it goes around in the Solar system, right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And we can project the path of these guys pretty
Speaker 1: well in the next couple of hundred years. The more
Speaker 1: measurements you have of something, the easier it is to
Speaker 1: project where it's gonna go, and the further future you
Speaker 1: want to project, the larger the uncertainties. But it's you know,
Speaker 1: if something's gonna hit the Earth, it might be nice
Speaker 1: to know what is it made out of? You know,
Speaker 1: could we knuke it and break it at half? Or
Speaker 1: is it just basically a pile of rubble and nuking
Speaker 1: it would do nothing. So we figured this is a
Speaker 1: good one to study. But what if landing on it
Speaker 1: sort of nudges it in our direction? They think about that.
Speaker 1: I'm sure they did, because you know, one of the
Speaker 1: ways you can affect the flight of an asteroid is
Speaker 1: to use a gravity tractor, which is just to send
Speaker 1: up a really small spaceship and go near the asteroid.
Speaker 1: And even the small gravitational effect of a spaceship will
Speaker 1: have a small impact on the trajectory of the asteroid,
Speaker 1: but hundreds of years later that could be enough of
Speaker 1: a difference, so you miss or hit the Earth. All right,
Speaker 1: So we're test driving our ability to get to asteroids, right,
Speaker 1: especially ones that are maybe hard to see or or
Speaker 1: hard to find in the blackness of space. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: And this one's cool because they tried to do it
Speaker 1: on the cheap a little bit. They didn't want to
Speaker 1: spend a huge amounts of money just like burn rocket
Speaker 1: fuel to get there, so they did a couple of
Speaker 1: cool tricks where they launched and then they spun around
Speaker 1: the Earth to use it as like a gravitational assist
Speaker 1: to get to the asteroid more quickly. All right, let's
Speaker 1: get into how they are sending this probe and what
Speaker 1: they're planning to do to land on it. But first
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. All right, Daniel, we're talking
Speaker 1: about Osiris REX, NASA's latest and current mission to land
Speaker 1: a robot on an asteroid and bring back samples from it.
Speaker 1: That's right. They want to scoop up extraterrestrial dirt and
Speaker 1: bring it back to Earth. Does it count as extraterrestrial
Speaker 1: if it's an asteroid? I feel like you have to
Speaker 1: be from another planet to be extra terrestrial. No, terrestrial
Speaker 1: just means from Earth, and extraterrestrial just means not from Earth.
Speaker 1: So everything that's not from Earth is extraterrestrial. You know,
Speaker 1: if we met aliens and they lived on a moon
Speaker 1: instead of on a planet, would be like, sorry, you're
Speaker 1: not really aliens, You're not extract Yeah, you would have
Speaker 1: to downgrade them a little bit, you know, like, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna call him? Mooney's Well, you know, I
Speaker 1: think some of the best places to find life in
Speaker 1: this older system are on other moons, So you should
Speaker 1: work on your anti moon bigotry there wor Alright, so Daniel,
Speaker 1: this is an ongoing mission. And it launched a few
Speaker 1: years ago, and actually it just landed or just tried
Speaker 1: to land on an asteroid this week. Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 1: They launched it in September and then it took a
Speaker 1: couple of years to get out there. Like I said earlier,
Speaker 1: they swung it around the Earth to save money on
Speaker 1: fuel and propulsion because NASA is trying to do these
Speaker 1: missions a little bit cheaper. The thing is about the
Speaker 1: size of an SUV, so it's pretty big, but it's
Speaker 1: not massive like the Space Shuttle. And it caught up
Speaker 1: to the asteroid in December eighteen, so after a two
Speaker 1: year flight. Wow, and it's the size of an STUV.
Speaker 1: That's huge. How do you even fit down inside of
Speaker 1: a rocket? Like didn't they just launched a test land
Speaker 1: that was a little convertible Cooper. Yep, they can fit
Speaker 1: that kind of thing on top of a rocket. You
Speaker 1: can look at the launch video on Google if you like.
Speaker 1: But the United Launch Alliance used one of their Atlas
Speaker 1: V rockets and it launched from Cape Canaveral. So this
Speaker 1: kind of thing you can totally fit on the top
Speaker 1: of a rocket. But I'm sure you know there are
Speaker 1: space constraints there Wow. So this is not a small mission.
Speaker 1: I mean in suv that's way bigger than the Mars rover,
Speaker 1: isn't it. I think it's about the same size. The
Speaker 1: latest Mars rovers are really pretty big. They're about suv size.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this is not a tiny little cubes at
Speaker 1: This thing cost eight hundred million dollars, so this is
Speaker 1: gonna be some expensive dust that we bring back. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about the mission itself. So what's the plan
Speaker 1: for the mission that's just gonna go there? And how
Speaker 1: is it going to get on the asteroid? So we
Speaker 1: don't have great pictures of the asteroid before we go,
Speaker 1: so once it arrives, it all of a sudden has
Speaker 1: the best pictures of the surface of this asteroid that
Speaker 1: anybody's ever had. So we couldn't plan in advance where
Speaker 1: to land. So they spent like a year or so
Speaker 1: just orbiting the stroid and taking pictures of it and
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like where to land because they
Speaker 1: have a very delicate procedure and they need a pretty
Speaker 1: flat spot and they want to gather a bunch of
Speaker 1: like really small particles, So they had to identify a
Speaker 1: location that was flat enough for this thing to land,
Speaker 1: and also that was covered in like sand or bits
Speaker 1: that they could gather up, because remember, this thing is
Speaker 1: far away at the moment that it does it's landing.
Speaker 1: It's like two hundred million miles from Earth, which means
Speaker 1: that you know, light takes minutes and minutes, like fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes to get there from here. So you can't drive
Speaker 1: this thing with a joystick. It has to be fairly automatic,
Speaker 1: which means you need to orbit it for a while
Speaker 1: and make a really careful plan about where to land.
Speaker 1: Woh and it did all that, like it did a
Speaker 1: reconnaissance pass, yeah, exactly over the last year just to
Speaker 1: get pictures of it. And so it sent back a
Speaker 1: bunch of pictures and then folks at NASA like narrowed
Speaker 1: down to a few landing spots. But actually when they
Speaker 1: saw the pictures, they were really surprised by what they
Speaker 1: saw and actually a little bit disappointing. They were expecting
Speaker 1: that it was going to be covered like with a
Speaker 1: sandy beach, lots of really small little particles, but instead
Speaker 1: what they saw was like a big rocky plane with
Speaker 1: lots of like really big, like house sized boulders, which
Speaker 1: is a bit of a nightmare if you're landing a robot. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, there's no flat surface. It's all pretty rocky.
Speaker 1: It's all pretty rocky. And they were hoping to gather up,
Speaker 1: you know, really small pieces. They're looking to collect bits
Speaker 1: of rocky, know, the size of a small coin. They're
Speaker 1: not going to grab a huge boulder and bring back
Speaker 1: to Earth, although that would be pretty awesome. And so
Speaker 1: what they need is a pretty flat spot covered in
Speaker 1: small little bits of record. What they found, yeah, it
Speaker 1: was like basically just a huge field of enormous boulders.
Speaker 1: So they struggled a little bit to find a place
Speaker 1: to land, but they did identify one really promising spot. Alright,
Speaker 1: maybe they need a bigger SUV for the bring back
Speaker 1: at all boulder. Yeah, And so the procedure is that
Speaker 1: they identify this spot and it did a couple of
Speaker 1: practice runs where like lowers itself down to the surface
Speaker 1: a little bit and it's got this arm. So the
Speaker 1: pogo stick aspect is that it's got this arm that's
Speaker 1: like eleven ft long that will stretch down and the
Speaker 1: sampling head is at the tip of that arm, and
Speaker 1: that's the only part that's actually going to touch the surface. Really,
Speaker 1: it's more like a mosquito kind of exactly. It's like
Speaker 1: a huge robot mosquito. It like very gradually lowers itself
Speaker 1: down to the surface and then the tip of it
Speaker 1: touches the surface. And it's like a pogo stick because
Speaker 1: it has a spring on it, so it touches the
Speaker 1: surface and it's only in contact with the surface for
Speaker 1: like five or ten seconds. Wow, I guess as the
Speaker 1: spring in the pogo stick compresses, it's in contact for
Speaker 1: it takes five seconds to bounce. It takes five seconds
Speaker 1: to bounce. Remember, the gravity here is really really low,
Speaker 1: and they made the spring very gentle, and this thing
Speaker 1: is moving very very slowly. But you don't want to
Speaker 1: have to have a whole separate propulsion system to lift
Speaker 1: yourself off the asteroid afterwards, and you only need a
Speaker 1: few seconds to grab it. But you know that means
Speaker 1: that like a four year mission, the crucial bits are
Speaker 1: like four five seconds in the middle of that mission.
Speaker 1: It's sort of intense. Everything comes down to these few
Speaker 1: seconds of contact and it has to do it on
Speaker 1: its own. I mean, it's a robot, you know, fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes away from in communication delays, so it has to
Speaker 1: do it all by itself. Yeah, it has some smarts
Speaker 1: on board as it's lowering itself down to see like, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm I gonna hit the wrong rock. It's got this
Speaker 1: round sampling head that has to hit a flat surface
Speaker 1: and then it's going to use nitrogen to blow stuff
Speaker 1: up from the surface, which will get sucked up into
Speaker 1: the sampling head. But if that sampling head doesn't hit
Speaker 1: flat on then it could all be wasted. And so
Speaker 1: it has a bunch of AI and it as it's
Speaker 1: coming down, it like maps the surface and tries to
Speaker 1: figure out is this still good spot? Should I bail?
Speaker 1: Should I back up? And as you say, it has
Speaker 1: to make that decision itself. It can't wait for its
Speaker 1: minders from Earth were fifteen light minutes away. But wait,
Speaker 1: it's not scooping up dirt or rocks. It's actually like
Speaker 1: blowing on it and then sucking it up from the air.
Speaker 1: Or how is it picking up the the Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: like a reverse vacuum cleaner sort of. It's got this
Speaker 1: round head and the round head sits on the surface
Speaker 1: and then it's got these little canisters of nitrogen that
Speaker 1: blow stuff up from the surface. That will then get
Speaker 1: filtered back into the head. And so this is the idea,
Speaker 1: This is what they think should happen. They can't actually
Speaker 1: watch it happen, so they can tell it to do
Speaker 1: its thing. It can say, Okay, I touched the surface,
Speaker 1: I blew the nitrogen. But it's pretty hard to tell
Speaker 1: if they actually got anything. But how does how did
Speaker 1: it get into does? Is it then sucking in the
Speaker 1: dust into the probe. It's got sort of like a dome,
Speaker 1: and then it blows the nitrogen from the bottom of
Speaker 1: the dome and then the stuff comes up through filters
Speaker 1: and gets caught in this little trap. Oh, it's like
Speaker 1: a little like a little cup. Yeah, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like a little cup exactly. Uh. And then they bring
Speaker 1: the cup back up into the vehicle and then store
Speaker 1: it or what They bring the cup back up into
Speaker 1: the vehicle, and then they try to figure out did
Speaker 1: we get anything, like, did we catch any thing? And
Speaker 1: if so, then they store that in the vehicle and
Speaker 1: then the vehicle will come back to Earth. It'll take
Speaker 1: a couple of years, and it'll drop it off in
Speaker 1: our atmosphere to land somewhere in the desert of Utah. Wow. Oh,
Speaker 1: I see, it's just hoping that dust will kind of
Speaker 1: fall in it, right, It's like you're holding out a
Speaker 1: spoon hoping that dust will some dust will land in it,
Speaker 1: and then you're bringing that back. It's a tiny bit
Speaker 1: more sophisticated than that. Actually, there's a little dome over
Speaker 1: it so that all the stuff that gets blown up
Speaker 1: by the nitrogen gets funneled into this collection part, which
Speaker 1: is probably why it's also hard for them to see
Speaker 1: what they've captured, because this dome that covers it. And
Speaker 1: they don't want a whole lot. You know, they're planning
Speaker 1: to get somewhere between like sixty grams and you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a kilogram. It's not a whole lot of stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere between like a candy bar and a
Speaker 1: really big burrito amount of stuff. But that would be
Speaker 1: enough to you know, really do some careful studies of
Speaker 1: what's on the surface of the asteroid. But it's sort
Speaker 1: of crazy. You know, you pick one aster word out
Speaker 1: of all the asteroids, and then you pick one spot
Speaker 1: on that asteroid, and this costs you like a billion
Speaker 1: dollars to get one spoonful of one asteroid, And what
Speaker 1: if it's like unusual. What if it's unrepresentative? What if
Speaker 1: that's just a weird spot on a weird asteroid and
Speaker 1: we're gonna spend like a decade writing science papers about
Speaker 1: the origin of the Solar System. It's funny how science
Speaker 1: work sometimes, but it's all you can do with Daniel,
Speaker 1: are you. Are you saying that they shouldn't do it,
Speaker 1: or that if they're going to send one, they should
Speaker 1: send a hundred instead of I'm always in favor of
Speaker 1: sending a hundred robots anywhere. Yes, absolutely, No, I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting. Roots that's good. I got some work for
Speaker 1: them to do. Are those the robotic grad students? I
Speaker 1: could put them to work? No, But it's always a question,
Speaker 1: you know, if you can get a really difficult to
Speaker 1: gather expensive sample, is it representative? And you have to
Speaker 1: do a lot of you know, interesting statistics to say
Speaker 1: like what's the chance that this is really unusual or
Speaker 1: this is typical. But it's the kind of thing we've
Speaker 1: been doing forever in science is generalizing from small experiences,
Speaker 1: Like most of our planetary science is based on looking
Speaker 1: at our Earth or our Solar System. It's the only
Speaker 1: example we have of a planet with life or a
Speaker 1: solar system we can study in detail. And that doesn't
Speaker 1: mean we shouldn't do it. It just means it's you
Speaker 1: have to wonder if we have sample bias. If we have,
Speaker 1: you know, if we're looking at an unusual example, it
Speaker 1: makes you wonder if we should have more robots. We
Speaker 1: should always have more more robotics jobs. Exactly. I imagine
Speaker 1: they're gonna take video and a picture of when it happens,
Speaker 1: so they'll at least have you know, video footage of
Speaker 1: whether or not it kicked up do us and whether
Speaker 1: they could see somebody falling into the cup. Well, they
Speaker 1: can't see that because it's inside the cup. What they
Speaker 1: can do afterwards is take a picture of the head
Speaker 1: and see, like, you know, does it have little bits
Speaker 1: on it? If so, then they think it probably went smoothly.
Speaker 1: And then they can do this really cool trick to
Speaker 1: see how much stuff is in the cup by spinning
Speaker 1: the spaceship around. What do you mean how fast you
Speaker 1: spin depends a little bit on how much stuff you're holding.
Speaker 1: For example, you know how figures eaters as they move
Speaker 1: their arms in and out, it makes it easier or
Speaker 1: harder to spin fast or slow. So if you add
Speaker 1: a cup full of stuff, like a kilogram of stuff
Speaker 1: at the end of an eleven foot arm to the spaceship,
Speaker 1: it will make it harder for that spaceship to spin.
Speaker 1: So what they did is they spun the spaceship a
Speaker 1: few times to sort of calibrate before it landed, and
Speaker 1: now they're going to spin it again a few times
Speaker 1: after it did it scoop up to see if it
Speaker 1: spins differently. And it spins differently, they figure, okay, there
Speaker 1: must be some stuff in the cup. What you can
Speaker 1: tell the difference, even if it's just a few grams,
Speaker 1: you can tell the difference. Yeah, isn't there a better
Speaker 1: way to measure that? Take a picture or use some
Speaker 1: like X ray or something. This is the cool measument
Speaker 1: they came up with, and it's pretty sensitive. You know,
Speaker 1: out there there's no air resistance or anything, and so
Speaker 1: if you have pretty well calibrated accelerometers, you can tell
Speaker 1: the impact of having a few kilograms of stuff at
Speaker 1: the end of an eleven foot long arm. Right, that's
Speaker 1: a long level arm for rotational stuff. Don't quite understand
Speaker 1: why they don't just have like some sort of direct
Speaker 1: sensor in the cup. You know, as you say, like
Speaker 1: a picture of the inside of the sample container that
Speaker 1: I don't understand, you know, like it seems also crazy
Speaker 1: and indirect. You spend a billion dollars and then you
Speaker 1: don't just like look inside the sample container. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: because it's gonna come all the way to Earth and
Speaker 1: then we're gonna open this box and hope that some
Speaker 1: dust fell into this cup. Basically, yes, well, they're gonna
Speaker 1: try their hardest to figure out if there's dust in
Speaker 1: the cup first, and they have these these techniques, right,
Speaker 1: and if there isn't, then they can try again. They
Speaker 1: can bounce back down like a postick. Yeah exactly. Pogo
Speaker 1: sticks are not disposable, their multi use devices, so it's
Speaker 1: gonna try a few times until it gets it. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: They have up to three times they can try to
Speaker 1: do this pogo stick extraction to gather some stuff before
Speaker 1: it has to come back. All right, Well, they launched
Speaker 1: in and they got there in eighteen and just this
Speaker 1: week they actually got their and possibly landed on this asteroid.
Speaker 1: So let's get into whether or not the mission was successful.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break. All right, Daniel,
Speaker 1: we sent the robot to the venue asteroid far out
Speaker 1: into the Solar System. Where where in the Solar System
Speaker 1: is this asteroid? Is it right now in nearby or
Speaker 1: is it kind of like out there in one of
Speaker 1: the asteroid belts. It's out there in the asteroid belt,
Speaker 1: and it's right now on the other side of the
Speaker 1: Sun from where we are. So Venus and Mercury are
Speaker 1: on the same side of the Sun as Us right now,
Speaker 1: and so it's Mars, but it's all the way on
Speaker 1: the other side of the Sun, which is why it's
Speaker 1: about two million miles away right now, and it's like
Speaker 1: twice the distance to the Sun. So this thing is
Speaker 1: out there in deep space. But didn't it make more
Speaker 1: sense to wait until it's closer. Well, we launched it
Speaker 1: quite a while ago, and we launched it in a window,
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't take as long to get to one
Speaker 1: of these things. But you know, since then, things have
Speaker 1: been revolving around the Sun and so these distances grow.
Speaker 1: It's been out there for you know, almost two years,
Speaker 1: all right, Well, just this week it had its first
Speaker 1: landing attempt, although technically, Daniel, can you call it a
Speaker 1: landing attempt? Is this even a lander because it doesn't
Speaker 1: really land. It's more of a bouncer, isn't it. It's
Speaker 1: sort of a bouncer. Well, how long do you have
Speaker 1: to have your foot on the surface of a planet
Speaker 1: before you could say you've landed on it? Like did
Speaker 1: Neil Armstrong put his foot down and then count at
Speaker 1: ten and then say, okay, I stepped on the surface
Speaker 1: of the Moon. I think the first moment of contact, boom,
Speaker 1: you've landed. Really, you don't believe in the five second
Speaker 1: rule for planetary conquest. I wouldn't eat anything on that asteroid.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think the first moment you touch it,
Speaker 1: you have landed on that asteroid. All right, So even
Speaker 1: with a pogo stick, it counts. It counts a slow
Speaker 1: pogo STI alright. So just this week, like yesterday for
Speaker 1: us here recording this now, on a Wednesday, they had
Speaker 1: the first landing attempt. Yeah, it was October twenty and
Speaker 1: they did it. They pressed the button. They thought they
Speaker 1: understood exactly where to go. They picked out this crater
Speaker 1: called Nightingale. It's about the size of like a small
Speaker 1: parking a lot attached to you know, like a hair
Speaker 1: dresser or something, you know, enough for like five or
Speaker 1: six cars. So it's wide enough that they think there
Speaker 1: was enough room to head down. Wait wait, it's only
Speaker 1: like four parking spaces wide. Yeah for an suv. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: This is a precision operation happening millions of miles away.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's not easy to find a better spot.
Speaker 1: This thing is covered in boulders. This particular crater is
Speaker 1: next to a huge boulder that the engineers were really
Speaker 1: worried about. It's like the size of a two story building.
Speaker 1: And the engineers on the project nicknamed it Mount Doom
Speaker 1: because they were really worried that it would bump into
Speaker 1: this boulder on its way down to the surface. But
Speaker 1: it had a giant burning I on top of it,
Speaker 1: so they're like, watch out for that. I don't look
Speaker 1: directly into the eye, all right. So it picked this
Speaker 1: small spot it was gonna land in it bound collect
Speaker 1: some samples. So what happened? Yes, So they did it.
Speaker 1: They pressed the button and it was like two pm
Speaker 1: Eastern time on the twenty and it fired its thrusters
Speaker 1: and then it descended very slowly towards the surface, about
Speaker 1: half a mile down closer towards the surface, and it
Speaker 1: took about four hours and then it was hovering like
Speaker 1: four feet above the surface. That did another survey and say,
Speaker 1: aren't do everything look as I expect? Are we clear?
Speaker 1: For go? And then it's fired its thrusters again and
Speaker 1: moved down towards the surface. That cruise just past Mount
Speaker 1: Doom and it landed in Nightingale. It took some pictures,
Speaker 1: you know, of the sample head as it got closer
Speaker 1: and closer to the surface, and according to the robot,
Speaker 1: everything went beautiful. It sent back a message that said
Speaker 1: sample collection is complete. Wow, that's probably the best email
Speaker 1: they've ever received. At the next mission, I know they
Speaker 1: had to wait fifteen minutes. You know what's that like
Speaker 1: to spend you know, a decade building this thing and
Speaker 1: designing it, sending it up, waiting years for it to land,
Speaker 1: then knowing like the crucial moments, a crucial five seconds
Speaker 1: already happened, and you're waiting fifteen minutes just to get
Speaker 1: the news. It's like recording a podcast a week in advance,
Speaker 1: knowing people are gonna like it. But have they published
Speaker 1: videos or have they published these photos? Like don't they
Speaker 1: have photos and videos of like the moment as the
Speaker 1: tip touches it and they can see the dust cloud.
Speaker 1: They think it all went really well, and from the
Speaker 1: pictures they have, everything looks great, so they reported positive results.
Speaker 1: They haven't yet done like that spin maneuver, so it's
Speaker 1: going to take them about a week to figure out
Speaker 1: if they actually got anything into the cup or not.
Speaker 1: All the indications suggest everything went well, but they can't
Speaker 1: actually tell what's in the cup without doing this spinning maneuver.
Speaker 1: And so what happens if they didn't get any stuff.
Speaker 1: If they didn't get any stuff, if the thing spins
Speaker 1: around the same speed as it did before they went
Speaker 1: down and did their poco stick, then they're gonna find
Speaker 1: another spot. They have four candidates bots, and they chose
Speaker 1: Nightingale if that was the best chance, But they have
Speaker 1: three other backup spots, and they're just gonna move it
Speaker 1: around and try again, and they're gonna wait until January.
Speaker 1: They're gonna scope it out and program it and get
Speaker 1: it all set up, and they do a couple of
Speaker 1: rehearsals before they actually go down to the surface, so
Speaker 1: it takes them a couple of months. You know, they're
Speaker 1: really cautious about all of this stuff. There's there's no rushing,
Speaker 1: so the next attempt will be in January. If this
Speaker 1: one didn't collect enough stuff, but if it did collect enough,
Speaker 1: it's going to come back. Then it's going to come back,
Speaker 1: and then it's scheduled to be back here in Earth
Speaker 1: in twenty twenty three. So this little container that might
Speaker 1: have like secrets of the origins of our solar system
Speaker 1: and fascinating answers to questions about chemistry might be flying
Speaker 1: through the Solar system to take years to get to us,
Speaker 1: and it's like candy bar of science. Data will be
Speaker 1: dropping into the Utah Desert in three But I guess
Speaker 1: maybe a question I have is if they have to
Speaker 1: go to another site to land and get samples, wouldn't
Speaker 1: that contaminate the first sample or do not care from
Speaker 1: where exactly in the s roid you got it. No,
Speaker 1: you're definitely right, it's better to get it from just
Speaker 1: one site. On the other hand, you know, if you
Speaker 1: are going to sample just one asteroid, maybe their advantages
Speaker 1: to having dust from two locations because then you're less
Speaker 1: likely to pick a weird spot. But it definitely sort
Speaker 1: of models the issue. You know, we talked about getting
Speaker 1: samples back from Mars. One of the real advantages of
Speaker 1: doing sample returns that you know where the samples are
Speaker 1: coming from. You can choose them. You can say it
Speaker 1: was the bottom of a basin, or is under a
Speaker 1: cliff or whatever, rather than just you know, the rocks
Speaker 1: that come here naturally from Mars from getting blasted off
Speaker 1: the surface. So you definitely want to know where it
Speaker 1: came from. This valuable piece of science advice. But you know,
Speaker 1: if it doesn't work the first time, it's better to
Speaker 1: have something in your container than to have nothing. Okay,
Speaker 1: So then what's the plan once it comes back to
Speaker 1: orbit and then greet it and hold it carefully and
Speaker 1: then bring it back down. What's the plan? No, it
Speaker 1: won't be nearly so gentle and arrival. Osirius Rex can't
Speaker 1: land on the surface of the Earth. It's too delicate.
Speaker 1: So it's just gonna fly by and it's going to
Speaker 1: drop the capsule. It's just gonna sort of jettison it
Speaker 1: and it's going to fall to Earth. What after all
Speaker 1: that a billion dollars, it's just gonna drop it on Earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these things should be pretty robust. It's tightly held, it's
Speaker 1: not that heavy. It's got a heat shields so it
Speaker 1: can survive re entry, and then it has a small
Speaker 1: set of parachutes to slow it down. So it should
Speaker 1: just sort of like gently land on the surface of
Speaker 1: the planet, and it's targeted towards the big arid flat
Speaker 1: deserts of Utah, where aren't buildings or people to hit,
Speaker 1: and so that's what they expect. They'll just gently float
Speaker 1: down to the surface in Utah and there are a
Speaker 1: lot of dust though in the desert there is, but
Speaker 1: this thing should be pretty tightly sealed. All right. Well,
Speaker 1: that's pretty cool, So stay tuned. Maybe by the time
Speaker 1: you listen to this podcast you can google Osiris rex
Speaker 1: and find out if they did in fact get some
Speaker 1: samples from the story. Yeah, and I'm sure that the
Speaker 1: scientists are already planning their experiments and thinking about what
Speaker 1: to do. They have all sorts of ideas for how
Speaker 1: to study that regular you know, is it made of
Speaker 1: smaller bits or bigger bits? And what's in there? What
Speaker 1: kind of amino acids are in there. They have all
Speaker 1: sort of cool gizmos in their laboratory for figuring out,
Speaker 1: you know, is there any gas in there, is anything
Speaker 1: active in there? All sorts of stuff. So there's a
Speaker 1: whole bunch of scientists like literally licking their lips waiting
Speaker 1: for this candy bar from space to be delivered. And
Speaker 1: it should hopefully tell us a lot about our origins, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's in the acronym, but she tell us
Speaker 1: a lot about how the Solar system formed and kind
Speaker 1: of our place in that history, right yeah, And what's
Speaker 1: typical and what's not typical. And you know, then we'll
Speaker 1: have samples from Earth, of course, and we can compare
Speaker 1: them to samples from this asteroid, and if they're really different,
Speaker 1: that will tell us that, you know, the Earth is unusual,
Speaker 1: or that all the geological activity on Earth and the
Speaker 1: biological activity has changed the mix of stuff that we
Speaker 1: started from. And most likely it'll just inspire more questions.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the stuff on the asteroid will be significantly
Speaker 1: different from the stuff we have here on Earth, and
Speaker 1: then will wonder is it the chemistry of Earth? And
Speaker 1: somebody will say that we better go sample another asteroid
Speaker 1: to figure out what's unusual and what's typical. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: the next time you see a poco stick, think about
Speaker 1: the fact that NASA uses them for their engineering to
Speaker 1: land in other extraterrestrial bodies. Do you think there was
Speaker 1: probably a moment of inspiration on the NASA engineering team.
Speaker 1: They were like, I wonder what we could do to
Speaker 1: gently touch the surface of this asteroid. And then one
Speaker 1: of them went home and well, I'm sure, I'm sure
Speaker 1: they had a I'm sure they had a brainstorming session.
Speaker 1: Somebody was like, rollerblades, no, skateboards, No, how about a
Speaker 1: pogo stick? Wait a minute, you're imagine they're having this
Speaker 1: brainstorming session like at a park and they're just like
Speaker 1: watching kids play. How about a kite? Actually, actually that
Speaker 1: might just work. Well, whatever they did, it seems to
Speaker 1: have worked. And so kudos to a cirus Rex team
Speaker 1: for proposing this, for getting it built, for a successful launch,
Speaker 1: for an incredible journey to the asteroid, and then hopefully
Speaker 1: a successful pogo stick touchdown onto the surface of an
Speaker 1: extraterrestrial object, and hope it comes back safely. I hope
Speaker 1: that's a tasty candy bar of science. All right, we
Speaker 1: hope you enjoyed learning about that. Thanks for joining us,
Speaker 1: see you next time. Thanks for listening, and remember that
Speaker 1: Daniel and Jorge explain the universe is a production of
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