Googling the Cosmos

Desktop Exploration

A view of the universe from GoogleEarth

Just when you thought Google had covered just about everything here on Earth, they’ve come out with a cosmic exploration tool accessible through Google Earth. To get it you have to download and install the latest version of Google Earth 4.2 (available for PC, Mac, or Linux).

Laid out before you are stars, nebulae, and galaxies (including some of the most distant ones ever seen), all accessible through the same navigational tools as regular Google Earth. You also get constellations and a whole Backyard Astronomy layer, complete with images as seen by naked eye and telescopes. Hubble Space Telescope imagery, and two informative layers about the life of a star and the users guide to galaxies complete the opening set. I can imagine that once people get hold of this and play with it for a bit that there will be a blossoming of .kmz files (the overlays) out there for all kinds of tours and educational trips through the cosmos.

This is one of those times in the development of the internet and the World wide Web when I look back over how far we’ve come. The first computer I ever used was a mainframe that our high school had access to from a local research establishment. We programmed it in BASIC, although the advanced types could do FORTRAN or COBOL. The output? Paper printouts. The first computer I ever owned was an Osborne Executive that Mark and I bought in the early 1980s. My first modem followed shortly thereafter. The output? Paper printouts. On the screen it was all ASCII.

In record time we went from that tiny 128K machine to Kaypros and Dells, each one bringing us more and more capability for office apps, plus access to content on what was becoming the Internet. Today, almost a quarter century later, we’re reaching out to the cosmos with Google and other accessible tools. The other night I was watching movies on my computer and had to stop and marvel for a second about how commonplace it all is now. But, 25 years ago, not so much. If anybody had told me then that I’d be accessing images from an orbiting space telescope, using my computer and a network to send my work to clients around the world, and exploring the distant cosmos with a program that made it as easy as a mouse click—well, I wouldn’t have believed them.

For those of you who have grown up with the wonders of the Web and Internet at your fingertips, it’s all as new as today. I think it’s great and now I’m going to stop reminding myself about the distant past. The future’s here folks. Enjoy!

Now, go download the new Google Earth and get to work exploring!

My First Planetary Science Trip

Saturn as seen by Voyager 2 on August 25, 1981

Back in August, 1981 I took a trip out to California to be at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena to watch and learn as the Voyager 2 spacecraft made its closest approach to Saturn (and various moons and rings). It was a pretty major event in my life; it’s what turned me toward a life of science writing. I was working at The Denver Post at the time, and had talked the managing editor into letting me go out and cover the event (even though I was a newly fledged editorial assistant at the time). I think I must have told him that I’d represent the paper well, because he handed me an accreditation letter, patted my hand (which was sort of the editorial equivalent of chucking me under the chin, I guess), and told me to go out and have a good time.

A week or so later, I landed in Los Angeles, and proceeded to have the time of my life. JPL was sort of a “Holy Grail” site for me. I remembered reading about it during the Moon and Mars missions, so I couldn’t wait to get there and start watching planetary scientists in action.

So, there I was at JPL’s von Karman Auditorium and press site, with a desk and phone and press credentials, watching as folks like Carl Sagan (one of the people who showed me that science writing could be fun) would walk by, visiting with the press or talking with fellow scientists about what they’d seen so far.

Many of the press folk attending the week’s press conferences were experienced science reporters. A few, like Kelly Beatty of Sky & Telescope, the folks from Astronomy Magazine, myself, and others, had some astronomy and/or planetary science background. In fact, some were SO experienced that they could make some initial science diagnoses about the pictures at about the same time the scientists themselves were figuring just what the heck we were seeing in the images. The image interpretations (called “instant science”) were flowing freely, and the many successful press attempts to figure out the images led one scientist to dub the science press as the “von Karman imaging team” as a sort of tribute to our interest and expertise.

One of the most enduring memories I have of that week (and there are many!) is the evening that images from the moon Enceladus were due to come in. It also happened to be the night that Ted Koppel was going to broadcast “Nightline” live from the von Karman Auditorium at JPL. The press rooms were crawling with several hundred print and TV journalists from around the world, and most of them worked diligently during the day to get their stories filed by late afternoon. By evening all of us who weren’t on TV would sit around and watch the TV folks from the east coast do their standups and live interviews. That is, when we weren’t glued to the closed-circuit TVs around the place that showed a constant stream of images from Voyager 2.

Anyway, that night, we were watching as Ted put on his makeup and his entourage of directors and camera people bustled around getting things set up. Just as Ted and the bunch were about to go live with their broadcast, images of Enceladus started streaming onto the monitors. Immediately we were all drawn to them, and a bunch of us were clustered around one of the monitors (the von Karman imaging team AND Voyager imaging scientists who happened to be nearby) arguing over just what the strange markings on the moon’s surface could mean. It was a free-for-all of image interpretation, planetary science “jousting” and pure astonishment at the amazing level of detail we could make out in the images. I remember standing next to Brad Smith, who was one of the Voyager planetary science team members, listening to him describe the processes that could have formed those strange cracks on the surface.

Well, we’d pretty much forgotten about the “Nightline” folks in our frenzy to look at the images. Not that they cared about us print folks. But, they DID care about having a quiet set, and apparently we were interfering pretty badly with Ted’s opening monologue. One of his assistants came over, huffy and waving papers and hissing at us to keep it down.

We did, for awhile. But, as the pictures kept streaming down, our excited discussions got pretty loud again. At one point, Ted chuckled and said that the excitement level was quite high, one of the major understatements in the history of press conferences.

It’s amazing to realize that 26 years have gone by since that wonderful, exciting week. I, of course, haven’t aged a bit, although my science writing has steadily improved over the years. That visit to JPL is, as I said, what launched me as “TheSpacewriter” (although, at the time, I wasn’t quite so audacious as to call myself that), and eventually sparked my interest in going back to school to study more astronomy and planetary science. And, another degree, a couple of major science research projects, some books, a magazine editorship, a bunch of planetarium shows and documentaries, a major science exhibit project, an upcoming vodcast series, and countless other projects later, here I am looking back with great fondness on the mission that set me on my way. So, here’s a tip of the ol’ scan platform to Voyager 2 and the planet Saturn for being there at the beginning of my own trajectory into astronomy and planetary science!

A Future on Mars

A future explorer working on Mars

Somewhere out there, the first Mars explorer is getting ready. I often wonder who it will be. A young woman from the U.S.? A man from Africa or Europe? A member of a multi-national team that spent years living and training on Earth and then the Moon?

The state of Mars exploration today is largely dependent on orbiters and landers. This is as it should be. These workhorse robots are doing the advance work for future generations of human explorers. Due to the work that the Mars rovers are doing, for example, future Mars geologists (areologists?) will know what to look for when they study the rugged terrain and now-familiar rocks on the surface of the planet. The mappers will have given us the most detailed surface maps, suitable for charting out the course of human exploration of the Red Planet. Even the Hubble Space Telescope comes in for some Mars exploration, charting long-term changes of the planet as seen from Earth orbit.

Eventually, however, humans will figure out the mechanisms for getting to Mars, exploring it, and living there for long periods of time. That will be, as a friend of mine at NASA once said, “time to quit messing around and actually DOING the heavy work of Mars exploration.” (Well, he didn’t say “messing around” but you get the idea. He IS a supporter of human exploration of Mars, even as he recognizes the need for precursor robot explorations.)

Science fiction writers have long explored Mars. One of the most realistic depictions of life on Mars comes in the book Mars Crossing by Geoffrey Landis. It’s a very scientific look at the very human enterprise of exploring Mars. The attention to detail gave me a few “I didn’t know that” moments, such as the fact that due to the heavy hydrogen peroxide content of the Mars surface and atmosphere, visitors who are exposed to it (and it would be inevitable on a long-term exploration) would find their hair bleaching out! Who’d a thought Mars would be the ultimate hair salon!

Blonding hair notwithstanding, human visitors to Mars will be profoundly changed by the experience in many ways. Witness the life-changing experiences that astronauts who have only visited the Moon and low-Earth orbit have described when talking about their work in space. I can only imagine our first Mars explorer standing there on the new frontier, looking around the dusty, desert surface, and then searching out Earth in the night-time Martian sky. It won’t be much larger than that famous “pale blue dot” that the late Carl Sagan was so fond of describing. I wonder what they’ll say when faced with the enormity of the distance they’ve traveled? Perhaps, like Neil Armstrong did when HE reached the Moon in 1969, they’ll have a prepared speech to share with those of us left back home. I just hope it will be peppered with a few repetitions of “wow!” and “It’s so beautiful!”