From the Vault: David Grinspoon on Pluto

It's really a great interview episode. Um, Dr Funky Spoon. It was a real pleasure to chat with very passionate about about Pluto. Uh, Pluto exploration, as as well as with other planets that we discuss a bit in this episode. Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. In today we're bringing you an interview

with Dr David Grinspoon. That's right. Uh. Dr David Grinspoon is an astrobiologist, award winning science communicator, and prize winning author, and is a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute UM. Yes, and he is the co author, along with Dr Alan Stern, principal investigator of the New Horizons Mission. They're the authors of Chasing New Horizons Inside the Ethic First Mission to Pluto.

This was a really fun conversation. I'm really glad we've got to talk to David about Pluto, about space exploration, about planets in general. And I think you are going to love this conversation. That's right, even if you're not that into Pluto, or you think you're not that into Pluto. There's also some Venus talk in there, so it's it's tremendous. Definitely check it out. We're just going to dive right into the interview and meet you on the other end.

All right, well, thanks for coming on the show on Stuff to Blow your Mind. Would you please introduce yourself to our listeners. And my name is David in Spoon.

I'm an astrobiologist at the Planetary Science Institute UM AND I study planetary evolution and I get involved in some spacecraft missions to other planets and I've I've written a few books, most recently Chasing New Horizons Inside the Epic First Mission to Puto, which I co authored with Alan Stern, who was the h himself, the leader of the epic first mission to puta awesome I just want to stress to everyone listening this is a great book and if

anyone is scared off from it, thinking, oh, I don't want to read about space probes and a far flung dwarf planet, I just want to reassure them that this is not only a very insightful book, it's it really has a it really is a narrative of the adventure in many respects. So I wanted to ask, how did how did you come to write, uh, to come to co author what some have called a nonfiction Michael Crichton novel.

Well I like that, um like that description. Yeah. Well, this story, the story of New Horizons and of the exploration of Pluto, is one that I've been following closely for a long time. Uh much longer actually than there

was a mission called New Horizons. There was an effort to send a mission to Pluto, and it just so happened that being a planetary scientists and coming up through you know, grad school and and all that, at a certain time that a lot of the people that I'm close with and friends with UM and have known for a long time, have been caught up, uh and became

part of this this effort. So this was a struggle that people were going through who I knew well for for decades, and at times it seemed like a very quixotic journey, like there's no way this is going to happen. I can't believe what these guys are going through. I can't believe they're not giving up. And and I remember we're thinking, you know, well over a decade ago, probably a couple of decades ago. Wow, you know, if these guys ever actually succeed in doing this, it's gonna be

a great story. It's gonna make a great book someday. It's gonna be a great book anyways, because of what these guys are going through. But if they actually succeed, it's gonna be an amazing book. I remember thinking that UM, and then more recently in UM I guess two thousand and fourteen, when New Horizons was actually approaching Pluto, finally Alan Stern, who I've known for a long time, approached me and said, hey, I'm thinking of I want to write a book about New Horizons, and uh, I want

to do it. With with a co author, and and you're my first choice, and um, I was, I was really psyched. I mean, you know, when you get an offer like that, what's the right answer? You know, yes, of course. And so so we agreed to enter into a partnership and and try to tell the story. Um and um. You know that had that had its own kinds of challenges because obviously Alan's relationship to the story

is very different from mine. And how are we gonna sort of combine our two perspectives and uh and tell tell the story where he you know, he's a character in the book. Um, and it's it's his mission. But we we worked really hard on that and thought about how we could use that as a strength or that, you know, the kind of combination of our two perspectives, and I, uh, it was. It was tricky, but I think I think we succeeded in producing a book that not only tells a pretty exciting story, but does it

in a unique way. Absolutely. You know, at time treating this book, I kept coming back to a question that I guess may may sound a little cheeky, but but also probably gets to some of the challenges of the space exploration. Whether it's harder to send a spacecraft to Pluto or to successfully push a mess mission proposal through NASA.

And I want to come back to that, you know, get your thoughts on that, but but I thought it might be nice to touch on that, that first challenge and uh, you know the amazing methods that we use to send spacecraft through the Solar System. Would you tell our listeners about our early dreams of a Grand Tour and the time frame for capitalizing on what you describe

is excellently described in the book, is a kind of stargate? Yeah, well, um, I love the first part of your question, so we definitely need to get back to that, because yes, it's there's some ways in which it's harder to navigate h Washington, d C. Than than Um, than the outer Solar System. I don't know. Both those have their own challenges and you have to learn how to be good at both if you want to do this. But um, the Grand Tour, M Yeah, so well, it's it's very difficult to send

the spacecraft as far as Pluto. Um. And if you were just going to launch from Earth with a normal rocket and just try to head out there, it would take um, well, much longer than the New Horizons took. You know, when New Horizon basically took only a decade to cross the Solar System, it would take longer because

the distances are so great. But um, you can take advantage of something called a gravitational assist where you fly in close to a giant planet with a huge gravitational pull and if you aim in just the right way, um, then you use the gravity, the giant gravitational pool of that giant planet to sort of sling shot you around. You know, it pulls you in, but you missed the planet and then it flings you out and you have

to aim just right. But you can use that to get a boost, a big pick up and speed, which makes it much quicker to execute the rest of your journey across the Solar System. If you've if you've done everything right. And the first time this was really used to dramatic effect was the Voyager mission. The Voyager missions which we're you know, our first close by buys of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus,

and Neptune voyagers. They launched in seventy seven. The Neptune encounter of Voyager two was which was the last one was nine so all through the late seventies and in the eighties, these missions were going planet to planet and sort of expanding our our knowledge of our Solar System and dramatic encounters. And there's a certain element of luck there that a lot of people really aren't probably aware of.

But if you look historically, I mean, you know, we started sending spacecraft to other planets in the sixties, and you know, the Venus Mars in the sixties, and then

um started thinking about farther going farther afield. And it just so happens that occasionally there's a lineup of all the planets in just the right way, so that if you launch at the right time, you can sling shot past Jupiter and then that sends you to Saturn, and then you sling shot past Saturn and that sends you to your earnest and then to Neptune and then to Pluto,

et cetera. UM. And but you have to picture the planets have to be lined up just right, sort of like beads on a spiral going out from the Sun,

and that alignment only happens every couple hundred years. And the amazing historical luck that I that I was mentioning that people aren't aware of is that in the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies, scientists became aware, you know, just when we were gaining the ability to launch spacecraft off of birth and going to the planets for the first time, scientists became aware that one of these what they call Grand Tour alignments was coming up in the

late nineteen seventies and eighties, so that if you launched a spacecraft by the mid to late nineteen seventies from Earth, you could do this Grand tour and go all the way out to the earnest Neptune Pluto. But if you missed that window, that nineteen seventies window, you wouldn't get another chance like this for a couple of hundred years. So you know, it's started just in the nick of time. But it was also a rush to launch because this.

People realize this, and the scientists proposed a grand tour in the early seventies, and then Congress said, no, that's too expensive, go back to the drawing board, and they were like, well, we don't have much time to get

this together. You know. There was some drama there, but they reproposed and Voyager got approved and the Grand Tour mission became the Voyager mission, which culminated in uh in the encounter, the amazing encounter with Neptune and it's moon Triton in with Voyager two, and as we tell in the book Chasing New Horizons, in a lot of ways of that encounter set the stage for the desire to go to Pluto, because with Neptune, uh you know, it was sort of all over for that generation, and people,

young scientists were like, well, wait a minute, there's more to explore. What are we going to do? And Triton, which was the last place the Voyager went, little moon of Neptune is is a very sort of Puto like place, a really strange, icy world with solid nitrogen basins and all this strange activity and geography, and it made people think, gosh,

if we could only send a mission to Pluto. And right sort of in the wake of the end of the Voyager mission, at least the Voyager Planetary Encounters was born the desire, uh you know, it really in nine for this this crazy idea of sending a mission to Pluto, which culminated, uh, you know, twenty six years later with a successful fly by of Pluto. By New Horizons in

two fifteen. Now you were talking about gravity assist there, and and of course the what ultimately became New Horizons, the New Horizons mission, and went through you discussed all the different sort of versions of the proposal. At one point the proposal was actually actually involved sending a craft towards the Sun first, right. Oh, yeah, that was one trajectory that would have worked, um as far as using

these gravitational encounters to get to Pluto. But it would have involved going towards the Sun and flying by Venus first and then back by Earth. And which is, by the way, something that is um done. Uh. You know, that's actually how both both Galileo and Cassini on their way to Jupiter and Saturn both did venus fly bys. Um. Sometimes you go in and pick up speed and then

you fling back outwards. But it was really not optimal for a small Pluto mission, and it was it would have worked, but it would have taken more years um. And it already takes a long time to get out to Pluto. Um. And also UM, I mean it would have saved energy and money, and that's the other thing. You're not just doing this to save time. On the journey.

You you want to launched a smaller rocket and still have enough energy to get to the Outer Solar System, and that's where these encounters help you also by kicking up speed. So it would have worked. But you also it's not optimal because when you're designing something to endure the coldness of the outer Outer Solar System where Pluto is, you really don't want to send that spacecraft in towards the Sun and endure the thermal environment near Venus if

you can help it. So it was one of the things that came onto the table to possibly save the Pluto mission, which had to be done multiple times when things got canceled and the budget got constricted or whatever, but it turned out to not really be the best way to do it. Yeah, you lay out, you know, all the close calls that just the uh, you know, the the quest to send a craft to Pluto went through. How many close calls were there, and how astounding is

it that the mission happened at all. It really is kind of a pails of Pauline story, you know, where everything that can go wrong almost did go wrong. Um, and you know that's that's part of part of why I love the story because we wanted to let people know not just what happened and how it was done, but really what it takes to get something through the system and all the different things that can derail it. And this story kind of combines all of those hazards it. Uh,

it had to be UM. It was canceled by two different successive presidential administrations UM. And that you know, one of the risk of these things is the time scale is long enough that you get it through and the government finally says, yeah, we're gonna fund this, we like it, and then you get a new government and that wasn't our idea. Forget it. And this happened multiple times UM. And then you know, they sort of kept changing the rules on new horizons and then there you know, there's

so many interesting crises. One was had to do with the nuclear power that you have to have a nuclear power source when you're going that far from the sun UM, and that introduces other UM hazards. I mean, just just in terms of the regulation. Uh, it's crazy getting something like that approved, especially when you've got a ticking clock and you have to launch by a certain date or you're gonna miss your Jupiter fly by window and so

that was tricky. And then all these things happened. Last last Albumos Lab, which is the only place where they make the plutonium, got shut down because of a security breach, um and uh, they weren't gonna have enough time to get enough plutonium. And you know, so that's one whole area of of intrigue. And and you know, near mishap and then you know, there were there were a couple

of just unfortunate technical accidents. There were um, you know, there was a lot of kind of like political um uh, just maschinations within NASA and outside of NASHA that outside of NASA that doomed seemingly doomed to the mission again and again and and and this team, this crazy team of you know, they called themselves the Pluto Underground, that were committed to this goal. They kept having to pick themselves up and dust themselves off and basically start again.

And um it's really it's really an amazing story of perseverance that they just didn't let it go. Yeah, I mean not only the you discussed, not only like the technological hurdles and then of course the political sphere, but

but even just within the realm of space exploration. Like suddenly, given that that grand times span for the for the project, Uh, new new things become exciting just within the realm of space exploration that can potentially detract from a mission like this, right, yeah, absolutely, So you know there's something that something comes along. You know, again we're talking to an effort that started really succeeded in two fifteen, and you know it's a shifting landscape.

New discoveries happen, UM, new constituencies form with a NASA to do do other kinds of missions. I mean, for instance, one thing that that came along UM during this time period was that Europa, the icy moon of Jupiter, got much more interesting in the in the sense that we discovered um with the Galletle mission, we discovered that Europa likely has an ocean and is a possible habitable environment.

So um, the Pluto mission is doing well, and then all of a sudden, there's this huge movement within the planetary science community to divert resources and compete a mission to Europa instead because of these discoveries, and and you know, nobody on the New Horizons team is going to argue, well, Europe is not interesting and not important. I wouldn't argue

that that for a second. Everybody, you know, we all acknowledge that these are all important goals, but there's the shiny new thing all of a sudden, you know, late a minute. We've been waiting our turn, you know, so that things things like that happened multiple times. I actually have heard of like a planetary partisanship before. You know, I had a friend who did some research on Jupiter's moon Io and she had some kind of negative things to say about Europa. Well, okay, I mean there is

there is definitely an element of that. And in a way, then the way NASA sets up it's UM, it's competition for missions, UM kind of encourages that because there are these different UM interest groups within NASA. There's like, I mean, I'm really interested in Venus exploration, so I'm part of this group called VEX at the Venus Exploration Activities Group, And there's me PAD, which is the Mars Exploration Activities Group,

and then there's the Outer Planets Activities Group. And you know when we when NASA does their annual h decadal ranking of mission priorities, were sort of organized into these different constituencies and we're all putting our favorite mission forward. So there is this competition, um, and then even beyond that, when there's a call for new missions, you know there's going to be a small or medium class or large

class mission. Different teams compete, you know, And I've been on these teams, and you put years into these missions, and you compete really hard. So of course you want your mission. I mean, I want my Venus mission that I'm a co investigator on to be selected. And then when an asteroid mission or a Jupiter mission or something gets selected instead, I'm really bummed about that same time. So that's true, and that's partly just a measure of

the way we compete things. But I do have to say, and I and this is really true, that there's a larger sense in which we're all on the same team and feel that way. So that when the competition is over and one of these missions comes to the launch pad, whether it's a Mars mission and asteroid mission, uh whatever, everybody in the community cheers that launch. I mean, because we all, you know, when you back up from that, we're all pretty psyched about exploring the whole Solar System.

And even though you'll hear me and some of my colleagues grumble about, oh my got another Mars mission got funded, what about Venus? What about you know? But then then when that Mars mission actually launches and lands successfully, we get tears in our eyes too, and we're like, this is so amazing. So you know, we yeah, we compete for our separate constituencies, but we all I think also genuinely u root for and identify with the larger project of exploring the sol war system. Yeah, I want to

be clear in case my friend is listening. She I think she was joking when she was slagging. Well, I mean, we do talk about it, you know, every scheme and like market I hope people, you know, But at the end of the day, we're I mean, and you know, of course you get personal um grudges and all. You know, human human beings are human beings. But at the end of the day, uh, we're all pretty excited about about

all of the exploration. All right, we're gonna jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll be right back, and we're back. I found it really astounding, especially to think about this as we were at the very close of the decade, as we're recording this, but at one point, I think during two thousand you mentioned that NASA just shelved the idea of a Pluto mission altogether until the twenties.

So I think it's it's amazing to think that there's like an alternate timeline out there in which you and Alan might have written a book about the desire for a Pluto mission in the twenties rather than what we have a definitive history of the planet's first exploration. That's right.

I mean, there's so many alternate timelines like that, And this was a case where basically, um, you know, more than once NASA let it, you know, got to the stage where there's going to be a competition for this mission, which is a huge win for the people wanting to go to Puto. It's like NASA sponsoring a competition for proposals. That means that they're gonna pick a winning proposal and then somebody gets to fly mission to Pluto and hopefully it's our team, but at least it's some team, so

that's great. But then they have this competition and everybody works really really hard on all their proposals, and you know, it's this crazy amount of effort to get this in and then NASA says at the end of it, well, actually we're not picking anybody, and um, the whole concept is is canceled um because a budget problems. And by the way, we're just not going to go to Pluto

for the next twenty years. So that was actually something that was declared by the Associate Administrator of NASA at one point, and that was really a low point for the morale, as you can imagine. But there were interesting things that happened, um at that point. Um, there was a big public interest campaign. There was the Planetary Society got involved. There are a group that advocates a public membership group that advocates for planetary exploration and other um.

You know, the public got involved and there was a lot of pressed about this and people were like demanding, no, we want our government, we want NASA to send a mission to Pluto. And then NASA got tens of thousands of letters saying you can't cancel Pluto, we want this. And so there were points and that that point you mentioned where it was completely canceled was one in particular where the public input became really key to keeping the

effort going. UM. And you know, of course there were efforts by the Pudo underground to sort of help marshal that public interest and encourage letter writing. But at the same time it was really genuine. There was there was indeed an outpouring of mass public support. And UM. That's another thing that's interesting I think about the whole story.

Was it at the heart of it, there's this band of sort of I guess I don't want to quite call them fanatics but almost but like you know, really determined UM scientists, UM, who wanted to do this UM. But then UM there's also the larger planetary scientists community that had to be sort of won over to their cause. And then and then outside of that, there's just the public that got very involved and at times, UM, the support of the public was pivotal in UM keeping the

effort going and ultimately and ensuring a success. So we know you have a special place in your heart for Venus, and maybe we can come back to that later on. But what is so captivating in particular about Pluto. Well, Pluto, of course, you know, historically it's been the place that we just didn't know anything about, UM and uh so it was you know, in science fiction from the golden age of science fiction in the you know, sixties, seventies, eighties,

when we really didn't know anything about Pluto. It's this um, this kind of mystery world um, and there's a lot of great law laura about Pluto. But then, of course, scientifically, once we started to learn about the existence of the Cooper Belt, which is this whole third realm of the

Solar System. You know, you've got the inner rocky planets, the outer gas giants, and then the outer outer Coiper Belt, which is this vast zone of these icy and rocky objects, you know, millions of them beyond the orbit of Neptune that we didn't even know about. All we knew about was Pluto. It turned out, we discovered really in the in the ninety nineties that Pluto is the tip of the iceberg of this huge unknown realm of the Solar System.

And so that in itself made it very interesting to want to go and visit one of these bodies, because those are leftovers from the formation of the Solar System. You know, they're sort of leftover building pile of building

materials that made the planets. So we know there's answers out there too, questions of our own origins, but then, you know, there was always the possibility, certainly in my mind, and I know in the mind of some of the other um, some of the people involved in the mission, that well, what if, against all odds, this thing actually works and we get to Pluto, And then what if it's kind of boring. It's be cool to get there, no matter what, but what if it's just kind of

like a a crater ice ball um. You know, you could learn some things, you count the creators, you measured with the serviceman out of it. You know, it would it would no matter what, it would be cool. But but in the back of my mind it was like, well, you know, what if it's just not the most exciting place. And it seemed plausible because we have this sort of prejudice against um cold places that are far from other things.

We expect them to be inactive, and that's you know, in our textbooks, you know, we thought the moons of Jupiter would be boring and inactive, and it turns out there not because the gravitational pull of Jupiter makes them pulse with activity. We didn't know that until we got there. By the same token, a lot of people thought Pluto

would be boring and inactive. And the thing that's if I had to summarize, you know, and a very short number of sentences, what's surprising and exciting about Pluto compared to our expectations is that it's really active. It's geologically alive. It's not old and dead and just covered with creators. It pulses with activity and that is something that nobody expected.

And when those first pictures came in, um, you know, there was like, in addition to joy and elation and just share amazement by the the team members, there was also this puzzlement of what is going on there? Why is this place so far from the sun. Also, you know, it's not discovered in creators. There's clearly activity going on there. And at first it was you know, it really was you know, a massive head scratching moment to figure out, okay,

what what's going on? And it it's just so varied and um active and complex in a surprising and delightful way that um, you know, I'm still kind of wrapping my head around that. Well, would you mind telling us a few like what are some of these most exciting and like the strangest revelations about this object? Yeah? What makes Pluto weird. So the first thing you notice, and there's all kinds of poetry in this, but it's true.

You know, as you're approaching Pluto, even days away, you see this bright heart shaped feature the heart of Pluto, which is just kind of lovely, but it's also that turns out to be a very very intriguing and interesting formation. It's this massive, um, huge glacier of solid nitrogen um called Sputnik Poinecia. A lot of the places on Pluto have now been named after famous explorers or missions of exploration,

and so we've got Tombao Reggio. The heart itself is named Tombaw Reggio, really, which is the after Clyde Tombau, the discover of Pluto. And then the big um western or left ventricle if you will have, the hard western smooth area is the Sputnik Plinicia, which is this massive glacier of flowing solid nitrogen. And that was the big you know. Okay, so you see this area, it's big, it's bright, and there are absolutely no craters on it. Zero And I remember John Spencer, who's you know, one

of these old friends from grad school. I was mentioning, who's been involved in this mission for a long long time. Who's one of the UH you know, very central. He's in the book. He's one of the people that helped UH plan the mission, and UM did a lot of

important work and a lot of the scientific analysis. I remember him saying on the day of the encounter, if you had told me that the first that I've ever told me that I'd see the first high resolution image of Pluto and it would have zero impact craters, no craters, I would not have believed you. And that's because craters are sort of our our chronometers. You know, when you see a planetary surface full of craters, you know it's an old surface that not much has happened to. It's

just been collecting creators over the eons. And when you see a surface with no craters, then you say, Okay, something's happening here. There's more recent activities, something filling in the old holes and paving it over. And this was, you know, a massive area UM with with no craters. And it turns out UM that and we didn't know this UM, but we should have known it because there's

no new physics involved. It was just lack of imagination or you know, this is why we explore because you discovered things and you go, oh, I should have thought of that, But but that that it turns out that solid nitrogen at plute temperatures is squishy enough so that you build up enough of it that it does flow

over geologic time with a little bit of heat. And there's a little bit of heat coming from the interior of Puto, so um basically that activity is convicting and flowing solid nitrogen which covers this massive area on Puto. And then closer and you look, you see like things that are you realize there's glaciers of nitrogen flowing out of the steep mountains on the edge of this thing, and the mountains are made out of um water ice because water ice there has the properties of bedrock. You know,

it's so cold. But if you actually look at those mountains, they have roughly the the height and shape of like the rocky mountains on Earth. You know, they're like fourteen thousand foot peaks of water ice with glaciers of solid nitrogen flowing out of them onto these nitrogen plans. So it's you know, it's a you can find forms that look familiar and yet you look at what they're made out of, and they're just really exotic materials. Isn't there

also some amazing precipitation situation on Pluto. Yes, and again it's another one of these things where it's something that looks familiar, but it's weird stuff doing it. So on some of the high mountains, they're they're snow capped, but it's not snow the way we usually think of it. There are there's methane snow on top of some of these, so you have you know, it's it's the same things that you have on on Earth you have rock mountains

and water ice glaciers and water ice snow. On Pluto you have uh, water ice mountains with nitrogen glaciers and methane snow. All right, So as long as we're talking about just the property to Pluto. I originally wasn't going to ask about this because I know you get it a lot um and but you also discussed it in the book. So my second grade son is studying the planets in school and he really wants you to weigh

in on this is Pluto planet. So my one word answer is yes, But what I would tell your son because maybe he's confused by hearing that because he might have heard in school, but it's not. I would try to use it as a teachable moment and say, well, here's why some scientists think it's not, and here's why some scientists think it is. Because you know, to my mind, what makes something a planet or not UM has to

do with its intrinsic properties. What's that object like, uh, you know, and and in my view, anything that's large enough to be round by its own gravity and have um the features that we associate with planets at you know, surface activity and mountains and atmosphere, which Pluto does, makes

sense to call it a planet. Um the i AU definition which became very popular and which some people consider to be official, although though I don't UM, it's base more on not the properties of that object, but what's around it, how it's orbiting, and what's orbiting around it.

And you know, if you're the kind of astronomer that doesn't think so much about what planets the properties of planets themselves, doesn't worry about geology and meteorology, but is interested in um looking through telescopes and identifying orbiting objects and thinking about classifying your orbits in different ways, then I can see how that sort of makes sense, um, but but it also at least leads to some sort

of absurdities. I mean, the basic thing is they say that if a planet dominates its zone and has cleared out other material, then it's actually a planet, and if it hasn't, then it's something else called a dwarf planet, which isn't really a planet. Um is what is said. The problem is at least to some silly in my view of silly things like if you took Earth and moved it somewhere else where there was a swarm of material, then it wouldn't be a planet anymore, or even worse,

even worse by that definition. Earth itself was not a planet for its first five million in years of existence, when it was being pelted with objects that you know, in its zone that had not yet been cleared out, and then it became a planet at some point, not because it changed, but because it's environment changed. So um, what you will find is that, um, there's a difference in the way planetary scientists speak about this from astronomers

in general. And I'm a planetary scientist. I study planets for living and me and really most of my colleagues. I think we use the word planet when we talk about Pluto. We even use the word planet when we talk about um, the larger planet like moons like Io and Uh and Tighten, because because again they have the features that we are interested in thinking about and comparing

between worlds. So UM, I guess you could tell your son going back to that, that some scientists UM that a lot of the scientists who study planets use the word planet when talk about Puto because it has these things. And then and then tell them about Puda instead of worrying about the the definition, say, because it has mountains, and it has an atmosphere, and it's big and round

because of gravity. And you know, hopefully when you talk to kids, you steer the conversation into something more interesting than scientists arguing about nomenclature and actually talk about what's cool about Puda. You know, absolutely now speaking of nomenclature, uh. You also at one point in the book you talk about the you know, the naming of the planet and some of the you list some of the potential names

that were thrown out there at one point. So you know, if we're considering alternative history, there's also an alternative timeline where we're not talking about the exploration of Pluto, we're talking about the exploration of Tomboy, which was one of my favorites from that list you share. Yeah, now that was. I mean, so the discovery of Pluto in itself is a really just cool story which we try to encapsulate

in the book because Tombo himself was a really interesting character. Nately, So again another kind of against all odds, perseverance wins the day kind of story which is echoed, uh, you know, seventy years or eighty years later in the story of the success of of New Horizons. But when um, the planet was discovered at low observatory, Um, then um, you know, they of course they made sure not to tell anybody until they were absolutely They checked their work and we

were absolutely certain they have found something. They didn't want to be accused of a false alarm. And but then once they were sure, they announced it to the world and it was in all the newspapers and everything. And then ideas came flooding in telegrams from from all over the world, um, uh, suggesting and letters suggesting names, um,

and some of them are pretty funny. I mean, well, first of all, there was some there was some politics involved, like personal glowals who was the guy that you know found rich Bostonian astronomer who founded the Lobo Ervatory where it was um the search was successfully executed and who actually Um really he started the search but didn't live to see it through. His widow wanted to call it um Percy in honor of first Belowl, you know. And there were some some politics that had to be offended off.

And then there were some very very silly UM suggestions that you mentioned tomboy, yeah, because somebody was like, well that sounds like Tombo, and uh, there's they've got a great collection of these, uh in at little observatory of the letters suggesting different names for Pluto. But the the actual name UM, I love This came from a m a ten year old English schoolgirl named Venetia Bernie who heard about the discovery of Pluto and UM mentioned that UM at the dinner table to her parents, who knew

an astronomer. Um that she had been doing some reading and mythology and she suggested Pluto because of its underworld associations and it's you know, all the you know, the mythological associations and and this was sent by UM by by telegram UM and and they loved it at Little Observatory. And there's part of the reason is because the first two letters P l um is also honors personal Loal. And in fact, the symbol for Pluto, you know, all the all the planets have kind of a symbol that

comes out of you know, mythology, mostly um. Like the Mars symbol is you know, the male um that the circle with the arrow coming out of it, and the Venus one is the circle with a cross coming out of it, etcetera. And the symbol that was adopted for Pluto has a P and an L which stands for Pluto, but it also stands for personal Lowal. So that way they were able to honor the you know, founder of the observatory without doing something so ass is to name

it after him. Yeah, that's awesome. I love the history that you share there about that, because because you go through the the history of thinking about Pluto, you know, discovering Pluto and then leading up to this exploration. But of course at the very start of the book you you really really to drive home just how delicate these missions are and how high the stakes. Are you open with what could have been an extremely tragic moment for

the spacecraft? Yeah, you know, we wanted to um structure it a little bit like a thriller because the people and for the people that lived through it, Um, it was like a thrower and that you know, there were long stretches where not that much was happening, and then all of a sudden, you know, like the red lights are all flashing and it's like, oh my god, does

that blooming? And out of the many sort of near death experiences of this mission, UM experience, perhaps the most rum attic was the one with which we opened the book, because Um, this happened on approach to Puto, when they were ten days out. All of a sudden they lost contact completely with a spacecraft. And that's something that should never happen, of course, And if it happens when you're a year out or six months out, then you have some time to work the problem and try to get

back in touch, and hopefully you do. But when it happens when you're that close, it's really a panic because you don't have much time. Not only do you have that initial fear of what if we never hear from but again, uh, you know, things do go wrong in spacecraft, and there have been spacecraft that have been you know, there was one of the Mars spacecraft. Um was made. It all the way up basically to the doorstep of Mars, and then something went wrong. It probably blew up and

it was just never heard from again. So those things happen. So that's the initial fear. And then once they heard from New Horizons, it was a big relief. But what they heard from it was basically helped, Um, something's gone wrong. I'm not I'm in a bad condition. What should I do? Um? Which is good that the spacecraft he knows to say that. And again, if it's six months out, then you have

plenty of time to work the problem. But this was an emergency because it was literally days away from when they were going to start the final sequence of observations that that week long period surrounding the closest encounter everything is automated, and it was about to begin that automated sequence. And the spacecraft is barreling down on Pluto a million miles a day, getting closer, and it's gonna fly by

no matter what, whether it's working or not. And you don't have a lot of time, and to make matters worse, at that point, you're so far from Earth with the spacecraft that it takes nine hours to send a signal

to the spacecraft and get an answer back. So just saying hey, are you okay, and then the spacecraft saying yeah, well I'm here, but uh, you know, my main computer rebooted and I've lost all the commands for the final observing sequence, which is what it said, And just that bit of communication takes nine hours, and when you've only got a few days start executing this sequence, that's really bad.

And then you know, so of course they have this emergency meeting and they figure try to assess the situation. By the way, this also happened on the fourth of July, so and the team had been given the day off to prepare for the intensity of the encounter to come. So the phone tree gets activated. People start coming in and there, you know, flip flops and bathing suits from their barbecues and um and like that in their flip

flops and bathing suits. People stay there for like three days, and you know they're sleeping under desks and needing out of vending machines. And all that like Apollo thirteen, you know, And and they basically figure out they have three of these nine hour communication UM turnaround times three of these to work with, so they're gonna have to fix the thing with three batches of commands. That's all the time they have. And they just get to work and it's

there's there's real heroism in this story. And UM, you know, we get to UM tell the story of UM some of these these characters you know who UM been working out of the limelight for UM, you know for decades on this and suddenly have their moment of just like total heroism, you know, UM, And that's that's great to

be able to share that with people. UM. And this team just kicks into kicks into action and they have to rewrite all the software and tested it and figure out ways to send it up and what to tell the spacecraft and UM, you know, nobody sleeps for like multiple days and UM just at the last minute, literally with hours to spare, they get everything reloaded on the

spacecraft and it's UM it ends up executing flawlessly. UM. But this was you know, this was the moment of crisis that came after everything else and was like sort of the last crazy hurdle to be crossed before before reaching Pluto. Well, it's an amazing story. It uh, it makes you wonder what caused the malfunction to begin with,

to get some trans neptune and malware. Actually they figured that out, oh really, yeah, you know, and it was a little bit of an oversight, which is in itself an amazing part of the story because one thing you read about is how carefully they tested everything and simulated everything and accounted for every contingency and tested and retested

and simulated and resimulated. But there was one thing they did um slightly wrong, and that was so what happened was the main computer got overloaded because at the same time as they were loading up the final command sequences, they were compressing some other image files that it had previously taken to make more room in the memory, and they was overloaded by doing all that. And you might ask, well, why didn't they simulate that the compression, uh and the

loading of the commands at the same time. And the answer is they had simulated that, but but the images that they had been using to compress in the simulation

were like fake images of planets. They were like empty you know, empty circles to say, here's the planet image you're going to compress, you know, while you do this, And it turned out that compared to the real images that it had to compress, they were um it was it was more labor intensive for the for the computer to compress these real images and the fake images they had gotten given. And so that was the oversight that caused the computer to get overloaded and crash and cause

this whole thing to happen. So the problem was literally that Pluto was too interesting. Kind yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, but it also just illustrates that, you know, no matter how careful you are, and these guys, I mean, what's amazing is how careful they were because as you only get one chance, and unlike earlier missions, there was only one New Horizons. I mean, you think of all the classic missions of ex planetary exploration, there's Voyager, Viking, all

these ones, these pioneer first missions to places. They did too in case one of them failed, and sometimes one of them did fail. But in this case, budget wise and for other reasons, there was only one small spacecraft and so it had to be perfect. So they tested and retested and had backup systems. But even given all that, there's just no way you can anticipate everything. And that's why you need like an amazing team like they had that can kick into action and solve problems when they

come up. All right, we're gonna jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll be right back. And we're back now. Of course, the journey doesn't end with with Pluto. Can you tell us a little bit about Aero cough and the further adventures of New Horizons. Um, that's right. Pluto was, you know, maybe the highlight, but

certainly not not the end of the mission. And one thing that was kind of innovative actually about New Horizons, very innovative, was that all along the plan was not just to go to Pluto, but to go to Pluto and at least one and maybe more Coper Belt objects. And and the mission was sold on that basis as

a mission to Pluto and the Coper Belt. But one kind of crazy aspect of that is that at the time of launch of New Horizons, they did not know of another Copper Belt object that New Horizons could meet, that could could could intersect after Puto with the amount of fuel and on the trajectory that it was on.

But they had very good statistical arguments as to why there should be such an object and why they should would no problem be able to discover it before New Horizons got to Pluto and redirect the trajectory because they knew that, you know, there were enough objects. They knew that they just they if you do the math, that shouldn't be hard to find another place where Horizon to go to after Pluto, and you're gonna find that object during the nine year journey to Pluto. So that logic

was in the proposal and it was pretty good. But then what happened was as New Horizons was approaching Pludo over all the years it does the Jupiter fly by, it redirects its trajectory. It's heading out towards Pluto, and they're searching and searching with all the best ground based telescopes on Mona Kea and all these big telescopes UM and they're not finding the right object. They're not finding

an object that New Horizons can get to. And then it got to the point where it was going to be too late and they weren't going to be able to UM execute that part of the mission. And the sort of the last minute they called in the Hubble space telescope and there was some drama there because Hubble, of course is very scheduled up for other observations and they had to kind of go to NASA Brass and say, look,

this is really important. If you want New Horizons to succeed, we need to sort of command here a little bit of time on the Hubble for the search to find an object. And there was some some drama and some you know, conflict and then but ultimately they were able to do it. And literally, you know, it's another one of these sort of just a nick of time. Uh. They found an object that New Horizons could visit, which was you know MU sixty nine originally and then was

given a more appropriate name. But um, but so just the finding of it was very dramatic and then um, but but they did and then um, you know, they did they made the right trajectory corrections so that after after the Pluto encounter, New Horizons was on its way. Um, but had to go another billion miles and traveled all the way from July when they were at Pluto to New Year's Eve. Um, you know, so another two and

a half years. Um and um, finally, um, this encounter happened and uh and boy was it amazing Again another surprising object that you know, you've probably seen the pictures what it looked sort like a snowman. But just the fact that it's this some kind of a contact binary. These two objects sort of squished together, really reveal something about the formation of planets and the history of these

objects in the Cooper Belt. And again you know, they're just the targeting that went into it's incredible how difficult it is. It's even harder than the targeting for Puda because this object is small. You're not completely sure where it is, You're not completely sure where where the spacecraft is. You've got one shot to image it, you're moving very fast, and you have to pre program the images in advance.

And just the fact that you know, when they get that frame down there's actually an object in focus in the image rather than looking at empty space because you targeted a little bit wrong. That's that's like people take that it's easy to take that for granted because it works so well, but that's you know, that's a real incredible achievement. It is amazing. Um. So one thing I was wondering if you don't mind kind of a tangent while we're out here in the realm of transneptunity and objects.

I was wondering you have a professional opinion about something we've talked about on the show a while back, the the evidence seeming to indicate the existence of a far off, larger planet out there that well, I don't know if you'd use this terminology because of how you feel about naming Pluto, but what's being called planet nine? Yeah, I prefer planet X. But UM, my professional and my personal opinion is, UM, I hope they find it because it would be so cool to learn about another large um

uh planet in our in our solar system. And UM, I think I'm skeptical just because the history of this kind of prediction is um you know, sort of littered with um you know, with things that weren't found where people said, I haven't actually found it, but I've found reason to believe it's there because of the statistical aberration in um, the in other orbits um uh. There's been a lot of sort of false alarms along those lines. UM. But you know, whether or not we agree on what

numbers should be assigned to this punitive planet. I'm with them completely in the hope that they do find it, because it would be a wonderful discovery. Yeah, I'm very intrigued by the idea. Uh so we uh we We mentioned earlier that we might give you some room to talk about your passion planet, about Venus here at the end if you wanted to do do you have anything to say about Venus? Like what, what? What do you

have your eye on there right now? Well, I'm very much hoping that we do get a mission to Venus in the next round of NASA selections, because they were really overdue, and um, there's too much mystery about about that world, considering that it's you know, the closest planet to us and in some ways the most earth like other planet. Um. And in particular, now we more and more reason to think that Venus might have gone through

a long phase when it was a habitable world. We used to have this this picture that Venus maybe had oceans early on but lost them very quickly in the runaway greenhouse. But the more we do detailed modeling of how an early Venus would transition to a planet without to a very hot and dry planet that we see today the more we suspect that that took billions of years, and so it may be that Venus was an oceanic planet like Earth for billions of years UM, which is

very intriguing. This picture of these two um very similar, very very nearby worlds, both of which could have been habitable for you know, half the or half the history of the Solar System, um. And so there are a lot there are a lot of mysteries that are very compelling as far as understanding how Earth like worlds evolve, how climate evolves, um and UM. It's it's sitting right

there waiting for us to explore. I mean, of course, Venus is a hard place to explore because the surface conditions now are so intense, and because it's completely shrouded in clouds. You can't observe the surface from orbit except in the radar. You can't get to the surface very easily without a really incredibly engineered machine. So it's not you know, it makes sense that we've explored other places first, because Venus is not low hanging fruit as far as

easy places to explore. But it's such a compelling place as far as the mysteries there that I do think that before long, either NASA or the European Space Agency or UM maybe even the Russians. I mean, there are not there are a number of agencies considering ambitious new missions to uh to Venus, and I'm excited and I hope I'm I hope I'm still around when we really

get to UM to answer some of these mysteries. For some reason, I've often thought or thought for a long time one of the most haunting sets of images from the whole Solar System is just the those little tiny slivers we get of the surface of Venus from the Soviet Venera landers. I there's not a lot in them, but every time I see them, I kind of get

a shiver. Yeah, I'm with you. I mean, there's something very kind of dreamlike about them, UM, because they look so real and so sort of familiar in some ways. I mean, here's a rocky world that's right next door. And yet because they're you know, maybe enhanced by the fact that the geometry of these images are so distorted, and we uh, just by the nature of the cameras that got them, and we only have a few. It's just it's like this glimpse of a world that we

can't really bring into focus. UM, and UM, it really makes you want to see more clearly what's you know, what's what's over that hill and what's you know, what's

what's really going on here? And so UM, yeah, next generation of spacecraft that could measure the minerals on the surface, UM, measure that the composition of the atmosphere in a way that we haven't really done yet, measure what's going on in the clouds where there's a lot of mystery and even some people think there could be um, some kind

of life in the clouds, I believe it or not. UM. But then but then also, like you say, you know, what's what's going on with those service images really images the surface well and just give us more of a visual, uh and physical sense of what that place is like. UM.

You know, I'm I'm very excited for that possibility. We'll tell us what we can do to help get us back to Venus flud NASA with letters honestly, UM, you know, it never hurts to talk to your elected representatives, but UM, you know, honestly, I think just you know, when you have an appropriate chance expressing enthusiasm for the space program and Planetariar planetary exploration in general is is a good thing, And um, I don't you know, I feel like it's I feel like there is momentum to do uh new

missions to Venus, like it is going to happen and in the next time scale of the next next decade. So I'm maybe I'm foolishly optimistic, but I am optimistic about it. All right. Well, the book is Chasing New Horizons Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon. It's available now, and I think all formats correct. Yes, that's right, it's even it just got just got published in Russian. If you're listening to

this program and you don't speak English, excellent. Alright, So that book is is out In the past, you've written on Venus and you've written on Earth. Uh so where are you headed next? And how can listeners keep up with your work? Well, Um, I have a website, um Funky science dot net and um that's I sometimes remember to keep it current. I'm on Twitter as Dr Funky Spoon um, and um yeah, I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be.

I've got all kinds of things going. I'm gonna be teaching a class at Georgetown this spring on how to Predict the Future, which maybe that'll turn into a book, I hope. So and uh, you know, just catch me if you can. All right, Well, well, once again thanks for taking time out of your day to chat with us. Um. You know, the book is fabulous and we we strongly recommend it to all our listeners. Well, thanks for god, it's been great having the opportunity to talk to you guys.

Thanks David, thank you. All right, So there you have it again. The title of the book is Chasing New Horizons Inside the epic First Mission to Pluto by Alan Stern and David Grinspoon. It's out in just about any format you could possibly want a book. And then again, I just have to drive home just how entertaining this book is. You might not think you want a book about machines and planets and distant planets, but it is.

It is really exciting. In the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your Mind, head on over Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That'll set you on the right path. But you can find this podcast anywhere you get your podcasts these days. Wherever that happens to be. Make sure that you subscribe and make sure that you rate in review, because this really helps us out. Huge thanks, of course to Dr David Grinspoon for joining us, but huge thanks as always

to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios How stuff Works. For more podcasts For my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.