One people, one sky. That motto belongs to Astronomers Without Borders. Its founder and retired leader, Mike Simmons, recently brought a guest to Planetary Society headquarters. Olayinka Fagbemiro is with the Nigerian space agency and also heads Astronomers Without Borders in her nation. Emily Lakdawalla tells us about four exciting planetary science missions that are currently competing for selection by NASA. Bruce Betts tells us about the search for 100 earths even as he asks us to find a citizen of Middle Earth in space.

A Planetary Radio t-shirt from the Planetary Society store AND a Planetary Society r-r-r-rubber asteroid.

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Which NASA Ranger mission imaged Mare Tranquillitatis, the Sea of Tranquility on the Moon?

Ranger 8 successfully imaged the Moons Sea of Tranquility in 1965 before being smashed to bitsintentionally.

Mat Kaplan: [00:00:00] Turning young African eyes toward the cosmos, this week on Planetary Radio.

Welcome. I'm Mat Kaplan of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. Mike Simmons stopped by the other day, the founder and just-retired leader of Astronomers Without Borders brought along a very special guest. He'll introduce us to Olayinka Fagbemiro of the Nigerian Space Agency. Olayinka is also National Coordinator for Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria. Together they'll tell us that the night's sky unites all of humanity.

Four new missions have made it to the next step in the long road toward selection by NASA. Emily Lakdawalla will introduce them to us. And Bruce Betts brings back his favorite game, Where in the Solar System, with a tip of the hobbits hat to Middle Earth. It's almost here. The new expanded [00:01:00] version of The Downlink will premiere on Friday, March 6th. You'll see it at planetory.org/downlink, which is also where you can be one of the first to sign up for the newsletter.

Here's a sampling of the space headlines Jason Davis collected for the most recent addition. The largest unnamed world in our solar neighborhood now has an official moniker. It's Gonggong, named after a Chinese water god. Gonggong may be a bit larger than Pluto's companion, Charon. The body's discoverers asked The Planetary Society to help with the public selection process. Gonggong won by a 2:1 margin, and the name has been accepted by the International Astronomical Union.

JPL engineers are making more aggressive attempts to get Insight Lander's probe, known as the mole, to get a grip. The instrument is still stuck at the surface of Mars. Now the spacecraft's scoop will press on the mole as it attempts to hammer itself. [00:02:00] Meanwhile, scientists has published results of the first 10 months of data from Insight's seismometer. It found 174 marsquakes. More than 20 of these had magnitudes of greater than three, which I can tell you, growing up in L.A., is enough to shake you up. More to come, no doubt.

The Juno mission has achieved one of its major goals by determining that water makes up about one quarter of 1% of Jupiter's atmosphere. That's three times as much as Galileo's atmospheric probe found when it plunged into the giant world back in 1995. Scientists have long suspected that the probe was simply unlucky enough to enter a- an unusually dry spot.

And NASA has acknowledged that the first liftoff of the Space Launch System, that giant rocket at the core of the agency's Artemis program, will be delayed to sometime in 2021. NASA still says it can return humans to the Moon's surface by [00:03:00] 2024.

Emily Lakdawalla is The Planetary Society's solar system specialist. Emily, great to get you back on to, uh, talk about these four brand-new Discovery program candidates. Could this be the year that Venus finally gets a little more love?

Emily Lakdawalla: It could be. I mean, Venus has been visited by a couple of missions, but by NASA for an awfully long time. In fact, it's so long ago, it was before I was even a graduate student. I was working on Magellan data for my grad program. And that's the last time NASA got any up-close and personal data. So I'm so excited to see two Venus misio- missions in this Discovery down selection, and I think the community is really, really hoping that- that one of them will get picked.

Mat Kaplan: All right. Remind us, first of all, where are these Discovery missions in- in the entire spectrum of NASA's, uh, planetary science missions.

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, Discovery is the lowest-cost program of NASA missions. There's three basic classes of NASA missions. There's Discovery, New Frontiers, and Flagship. [00:04:00] Discovery missions cost around $500 million. New Frontiers are about a billion. And then Flagship are like 2 billion and up. They're supposed to fly the most often. They're supposed to push the envelope, in one way or another, either with the type of instrument that they're using, a type of measurement they're trying to perform, the way they operate, the kind of, uh, propulsion they use, you know, one of those things. It's designed to be rapidly-developed missions that help NASA prove new technologies that they could later go on to use on some of their bigger missions.

Mat Kaplan: Insight on Mars is one of these, right?

Emily Lakdawalla: Insight is one of those. It's not the best example, actually, because, uh, of the way that that year's selection worked. But there have been some really spectacular missions that- that tested really new stuff. Like Dawn going to Ceres and Vesta. We had Messenger at Mercury, which was a fabulous mission. There's a huge number, uh, the Discovery program has really been quite successful over time. The hope is that they'll actually be able to pick two out of the four. They'll pick at least one, but people [00:05:00] really are pulling for two.

Mat Kaplan: And they did pick two in last round, right? Those two, uh, asteroid missions?

Emily Lakdawalla: That's right. There's Lucy and Psyche. Lucy is a mission that's going to explore a bunch of, um, centaurs and, uh, Trojans. These are rather distant small bodies. They tend to be ... They orbit around, uh, Jupiter's distance from the sun. And so it'd be the first kind of mission to go to multiple objects like that. And then Psyche's a really fun one. It goes to an all-metal asteroid. So those will be very cool. And I think, because both of those were asteroid missions, people were not surprised that the four mission down selected in this round, not one of them is proposed for an asteroid.

Mat Kaplan: I can't wait for, uh, the Psyche, in particular, 'cause it's gonna be so interesting to finally see one of those metal, uh, monsters up close. But take us through these, uh, four, uh, candidates that are, that are still competing in this round.

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, we'll talk about the Venus missions first, since, uh, since you mentioned those already. There's two. One's called DAVINCI+, um, the other one's called VERITAS. Both of them were [00:06:00] actually in the final round the last Discovery selection that wound up with two asteroid missions, which is one the reasons I think that people are really fairly sure that at least one of these will go forward. They're quite different missions. DAVINCI is- is one that will penetrate the atmosphere, is studying the- the qualities of the atmosphere on the way down. It's basically an atmospheric probe. It will take cameras, uh, as it's descending. But it's not designed to last a long time.

The VERITAS mission is a- a radar mission, which is, in a way, like Magellan, but it's specifically focused on topography, which I can tell you, as a person who studied Venus once, it is so necessary. The modern kinda renaissance of Mars exploration began with Mars Global Surveyor, which got the first really good topographic map of Mars, that formed the basis of all the rest of the Mars orbital work that's been done for the following 25 years. This mission stands a chance to do the same thing, to develop the topographic map that will the basis of everything we do on Venus for decades. So, [laughs], as you can probably, I'm a [00:07:00] little bit biased.

Mat Kaplan: [laughs].

Emily Lakdawalla: I love my Venus radar. I think topography's so necessary, and I've known Sue [Smecker 00:07:05], who's the, uh, principal investigator, for a long time, ever since I was a grad student. And I- I would dearly love to see her be in charge for a mission like this. She's lovely.

Mat Kaplan: Now, what about the other two? They're going much further out.

Emily Lakdawalla: Yeah. So the other two missions are pretty exciting. They're outer planets' missions, and uh, one of them has been proposed before, and that's Io Volcano Observer, which is exactly what it says on the tin. It's a spacecraft that's designed to orbit Jupiter and, um, observe the volcanos on Io. It's designed to try to figure out how, uh, all the massive tidal forces that are operating in- in orbit around Jupiter, between Jupiter tugging on Io, and- and Europa and Ganymede also, how that generates the heat that's coming out of Io's interior. Just how much heat is coming out of it, and try to understand better what the volcanism is doing on Jupiter's innermost and very volcanic moon.

Mat Kaplan: Can we assume that it would also have a- a camera onboard, so that we could get [00:08:00] really up close to those, uh, magnificent volcanos?

Emily Lakdawalla: It absolutely would. There's no question. As I've, as I've said before with Juno, it would be a crime to go to Jupiter and not have a camera onboard. This one, I'm sure, would have a- a nice, uh, infrared camera, near infrared, because Io's volcanos are so hot that you can map them, uh, by their heat alone. And so you would be studying at both in like regular visual images, and also in infrared wavelengths, where they'd be illuminated by their own heat. So you'd be able image them both in day and at night, to see the heat that's coming out of the volcanos.

Mat Kaplan: I would only add that it seems like a crime to go anywhere without a camera.

Emily Lakdawalla: [laughs].

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]. All right. How about this last one, the fourth, and- and the one that, uh, will be going the furthest, if it's funded?

Emily Lakdawalla: That's right. So Trident, uh, is a flyby of Triton, which is the largest moon of Neptune, the only actually big moon of Neptune, and likely a captured Kuiper Belt object. It's even larger than Pluto, and is otherwise very Pluto-like in its composition and characteristics. It also orbits [00:09:00] Neptune backwards, so it's probably a captured object. It probably didn't start out its existence there. We know that it has active geysers. Uh, it's just an opportunity to go by, map it, look for changes that have happened since Voyager 2 flew past, um, try to understand the particles and the environment around it.

And you know, Voyager 2, as cool as the flyby of the Neptune system was, it was a spacecraft that was really not designed to operate and get great pictures of things so far from the sun. So this would be the first really good flyby of Triton. Plus they'd also, obviously, get some good close-up views of Neptune. They'd fly past some small bodies along the way, probably, and do some great science, the way that New Horizons is doing science on small bodies in the outer solar system. And it has the distinction of being the only one in the list that doesn't have an acronym for it's name. [laughs].

Mat Kaplan: [laughs]. I don't know if it gets points for that or not. How soon might we be hearing the decision from NASA as to which of these, hopefully two of them at least, [00:10:00] uh, will be headed for space?

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, first the four teams are being given some time to do some further work to try to nail down the costs and the challenges involved in the mission. They can spend a little money, um, trying to develop some of the necessary technologies forward a little bit. And then they, uh, will give big reports to, uh, NASA about their progress. NASA will visit them and see how well-prepared they are to actually operate a mission. And then they'll make a down-selection in 2021.

I don't know exactly when it will be yet, and we don't know how many it will be yet. It will be at least one. Could be two. And um, [laughs], who knows? I guess, well, as long as we're being optimistic we can hope for three. Probably not gonna happen-

Mat Kaplan: [laughs].

Emily Lakdawalla: ... but uh, it would be nice.

Mat Kaplan: Well, we'll hope for quality and quantity-

Emily Lakdawalla: Thank you.

Mat Kaplan: ... in this round of, uh, the- the- the- the Discovery program. Oh, one more question. How soon after they are chosen might we actually see some of these head toward their destinations?

Emily Lakdawalla: Well, it doesn't take all that ... It shouldn't take all that long to develop a Discovery mission. Usually [00:11:00] it's, it's just, uh, somewhere around four or five years to launch. And then, of course, how long it takes to get data depends upon how long a cruise they have. It's very quick to get to Venus, so we could be, as you know, maybe five months after launch y- you'll be at Venus, and already set up and starting to acquire preliminary data.

But getting to other places, like orbiting Jupiter, and flying past, uh, Neptune, take a long time. When you do planetary science, especially if you're an outer planetary scientist, you need to be really patient, and be willing to accept the fact that you might be starting a project and launching, and then handing it over to a former graduate student to operate once it's in flight.

Mat Kaplan: Emily, I'm glad to still be playing the long game with you here in planetary science. Lots, uh, to look forward to, and I'm sure we'll talk again soon. Thanks very much.

Emily Lakdawalla: You're welcome, Mat.

Mat Kaplan: That's our solar system specialist, Emily Lakdawalla, of The Planetary Society.

Mike Simmons discovered our universal fascination with the sky when he started sharing astronomical wonders decades ago. It [00:12:00] led him to found Astronomers Without Borders, or AWB, where their motto is, One People, One Sky. There's hardly a portion of our planet that Mike has not visited, encouraging scientific wonder and curiosity wherever he goes.

Olayinka Fagbemiro is a kindred spirit. She is Assistant Chief Scientific Officer for Planning, Policy and Research at the National Space Research and Development Agency in Nigeria. She also leads the agency's space education outreach unit, so it's easy to see why Olayinka would also embrace the AWB mission. She's had remarkable success as AWB's national coordinator in Nigeria. In addition, she serves as the public relations and education officer for the African Astronomical Society.

Mike called the other day to ask if he could bring Olayinka to The Planetary Society's Pasadena headquarters, as she continued an [00:13:00] astronomy-focused tour of California and the United States. We were thrilled to oblige, especially because I couldn't wait to share Mike and Olayinka's stories with you.

Mike Simmons, always a pleasure to talk to you on Planetary Radio, and it is great to see you here. You've never been to, uh, this headquarters for The Planetary Society before.

Mike Simmons: No, this is the first time in this particular building. I was at the original one, which is a great old Pasadena house.

Mat Kaplan: I miss it.

Mike Simmons: [laughs]. Yeah. And the other one, uh, short-term. This is the first time I've stopped by here.

Mat Kaplan: Well, I'm glad you made it, and I'm especially glad, because you brought the special guest who is sitting next to you right now. Would you please introduce her?

Mike Simmons: Well, this is Olayinka Fagbemiro, from Nigeria. And Olayinka, uh, works for the space agency there. But of more interest to me is that she created and runs, uh, Astronomers Without Borders Nigeria, does fantastic things in the country to introduce astronomy and science to some very special [00:14:00] people. So, uh, it- it's wonderful to have her here visiting us for the first time.

Mat Kaplan: I suspect that most of our audience will know that you were Astronomers Without Borders for many years. You founded the organization.

Mike Simmons: Yes.

Mat Kaplan: And you've moved on. You're doing other exciting now. Obviously, that had to do with why you crossed paths. But how did you end up meeting each other and- and get to know each other?

Mike Simmons: Olayinka reminded me just the other day that, actually, we met at a conference. And I meet a lot of people. I hear from people in other countries all the time. And I always write back, because you never know. She was somebody who went back, inspired by the idea, and created something really incredible. And it's great to be able to do that as a part of Astronomers Without Borders. But really, people are doing outreach and education in astronomy, in STEM fields, all around the world. And to be able to give somebody, uh, uh, some inspiration to do it as a part of the network of people around the world is- is [00:15:00] fantastic.

Mat Kaplan: Olayinka, welcome to The Planetary Society. I ... It looked like you enjoyed the tour.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes, thank you so much. Um, it's a pleasure being here. And I'm particularly, um, excited to be at this place. I love the tour that- that you have, an amazing space, and I'm glad to be here. Thank you.

Mat Kaplan: We like it very much, and I- I'm glad that you've had a good time as we showed you around.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: You got a- a nice, uh, introduction to LightSail from Bruce Betts, our Chief Scientist.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, yeah. It's really great, because that's, um, the first time, uh, hearing about this particular project, and I think it's amazing. I would let it go back home and share with my network and- and see what more we can learn and inspire little kids about- about that. I think it would be a great, um, topic to discuss.

Mat Kaplan: [French 00:15:50]. We hope so, anyway. I- I certainly agree with you. It was only two or three days ago that Mike let me know that you were in town, and he wondered if you'd be [00:16:00] able to stop by. And of course, we love visitors. I was intrigued immediately, because he talked about your role with Astronomers Without Borders in Nigeria, but he also said that you have a day job. You work with ... Is it the N-?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: The Nigerian Space Agency?

Mat Kaplan: Yes, yeah.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes, yes. Yeah.

Mat Kaplan: Tell me about that.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: When I left university in the year 2004, I started a job with the Nigerian Space Agency in the year 2007, as an outreach and an education officer for- for space education. I've been there ever since. And along the line I- I got involved some other projects, and um, and Astronomers Without Border, like, um, universe awareness. And it's been awesome, like having a day job, and then having the time to do this other very important work. I- I think it's, it's a great thing for me, because I get, eh, the chance to inspire little ones. We're trying to raise the [00:17:00] next generation of space scientists, and- and- and STEM guys in Africa.

Also, I'm the Public and, um, Education Officer for Ash- ... African Astronomical society. What I do in Nigeria, I- I do by extension across Africa, African Astronomical Society is, um, an organization with a very big, um, reach to African countries. I think about 40 plus-

Mat Kaplan: Hmm.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: ... African countries are- are- are part of AfAS. One of the major things we're trying to do is first create awareness about astronomy across Africa. Astronomy is not really so much developed in Africa as it is in- in the, in the US and, or Europe. So one of the major work we're trying to do is to create the awareness, get many young people involved in astronomy. We're trying to see [00:18:00] a way of getting more people in the career part of astronomy, and also to use astronomy as a means of teaching STEM, science, technology, engineering and mathematics-

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Olayinka Fagbemiro: ... across Africa. These are some of the many things that we do as- as AfAS.

Mat Kaplan: My guess is that your day job with the Nigerian space agency probably keeps you pretty busy are- are they happy to have you involved with all these other activities like AWB?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes, they- they- they are. And, um, I think, uh, I've got a very good support in the Nigerian space agency because Nigeria has a pretty big country with a population of almost 200 million people and young people are most 30% to 40% of this population. So this space agency is happy to have as many extra hands as possible in reaching out to- to this large population of young [00:19:00] people. And because my role in the Nigerian Space Agency, it's pretty much like an extension of what I do with AWB, Space Education Outreach.

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Olayinka Fagbemiro: I personally had the Space Education Outreach of the agency and also we have this new space museum. We have a lot of young kids coming around almost on daily basis, which I- i coordinate as well. So it's, it's almost like there are no demarcations between what I do as- as Nigerian Space Agency and what I do as AWB.

Mat Kaplan: That's great. Is that space museum, is that the one you showed us the video of a little bit that was in a refugee camp or is that separate?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: No, that- that was, um, a project of AWB. It- it was a project about having an astronomy hub for kids in the internally displaced peoples camp. Uh, so in Nigeria because of the problem of [00:20:00] the insurgency that we, we've got going on, uh, around the Northern part of Nigeria.

Mat Kaplan: Boko Haram?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Boko Haram, yes. So we have a lot of displaced people from across the region, uh, affected by- by the insurgency. So we have of course people with young children in these camps. A few years back we thought these kids should also have a feel of what space and astronomy and all those funs could be. So we- we- we- we started a project of establishing an astronomy hub for- for these IDP guys. And, um, with the support of Office of Astronomy for Development Cape town, we were able to have the first one, which was a project that was targeted at this young kids who are mostly out of school.

And then we also had to bring in some counselors because we- we needed them [00:21:00] to become ... many of these guys are traumatized. Many of them were-

Mat Kaplan: Of course.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: ... displaced from their homes. Many of them have one or both parents killed due to the insurgency. And so they are basically not in the right frame of mind to- to even learn. So we had to bring in some- some counselors and- and we went ahead and made this, um, solar powered astronomy hub, which has smart TVs and internet connectivity with a lot of materials and- and videos and, um-

Mat Kaplan: It's beautiful little facility-

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, it is.

Mat Kaplan: ... from what I could see in the video.

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, it is. It is small, but it's also very effective because we have some people managing the project and what we do is, because we have a lot of kids in this camp, we- we have almost 300, um, young- young people. So we, we've been able to [00:22:00] look for a way to make all of them at least once in a week have access to this hub.

Mat Kaplan: Mm-hmm [affirmative].

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yeah, so we have like a timetable of, okay, so you're go in maybe every Wednesday or every Monday and- and use the computer, use the smart TV, you know, just have fun. We have a lot of posters on astronomy and it's been cool.

Mat Kaplan: I'll be back in moments with Olayinka Fagbemiro, the middle of Astronomers Without Borders. Nigeria and AWB founder, Mike Simmons.

Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Yale astronomer, Debra Fischer. I've spent the last 20 years of my professional life searching for other worlds. Now I've taken on the 100 Earth's project. We want to discover 100 earth-sized exoplanets circling nearby stars. It won't be easy. With your help, the Planetary Society will fund a key component of an exquisitely precise spectrometer. You can learn more and join the search a planetary.org/100earths. Thanks.

Mat Kaplan: [00:23:00] Welcome back to Planetary Radio. How many children are among the displaced in- in Nigeria? Do you, do you know roughly?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Maybe not the displaced, but- but the latest, um, UNICEF statistics says they're 13.2 million out of school kids in Nigeria.

Mat Kaplan: Wow, out of school?

Olayinka Fagbemiro: Yes.

Link:

Astronomers Without Borders - The Planetary Society