Category Archives: national geographic

national geographic, planetary science, planets, solar system

Extreme Planetary Tourism

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Explore the Solar System

— but Bring Your Adventure Gear

Some years ago my friend and colleague Paul Hodge, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy at the University of Washington, wrote a book called Higher Than Everest: An Adventurer’s Guide to the Solar System, that took the reader out to some of the most dangerous, gorgeous, and adventurous places in the solar system. I gobbled that book up because I could sit there and read it and dream about what it would be like to visit those worlds. To be sure, it would be the most extreme touristic adventure you could imagine: traversing the baking hot plains of Mercury, finding a way to dip into the Venus atmosphere and study that incredible surface; exploring Mars; braving the extreme hazards of the Jovian and Saturnian systems; warming up to Uranus and Neptune; and making one’s way to Pluto and the hinted-at treasury of other worlds that exist beyond Neptune. It would be the trip of a lifetime, if only one could fit all of that into one lifetime!

A computer-generated scene of the Galileo probe passing Io during its mission. Courtesy National Geographic.

Well, fast-forward more than a decade, and National Geographic TV has created a series called “A Traveler’s Guide to the Planets” that extends the adventure of planetary exploration  into the video realm and really makes you feel like you’re there on those other worlds.

It’s a three-night series that begins on February 14th. The folks at Nat Geo were kind enough to send me copies of two of the programs (about Jupiter and Saturn, respectively, which air on the 14th)  for preview. The presentations cover the exploration of the planets in a pretty exciting and visually stimulating way. For example, there are some really nice CG sequences set on Jupiter’s moon Io that look for all the world as if you’re standing right there, witnessing those volcanic eruptions against the backdrop of Jupiter rising over the not-too-distant horizon.

The presentations also include interesting interviews and commentary from planetary scientists like Torrance Johnson and Bob Pappalardo — both of who have worked extensively exploring the planets using remote probes such as the Voyager and Galileo spacecraft. Each hour takes you TO the planets, exploring via CG and animation just what it would be like to visit those worlds. That’s one of the coolest parts of the series — and I hope that “you are there” feeling will inspire people to learn more about the worlds of the solar system.

I’ve often wondered what our next generation of planetary explorers will find when they finally get themselves (or their spacecraft) “out there” again – with the newest instruments to help them gather data. I’m sure they’ll find wonderful things — as this series illustrates.  I hope that at least some of the audience members who see these shows will be inspired enough to join those missions of the future! There’s much to learn from the past, as these programs demonstrate — and more to find in the years to come!

Lunar exploration, national geographic

Steps to Space

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The Moon’s in Our Future

The lunar surface. Courtesy JAXA.
The lunar surface. Courtesy JAXA.

Ever since I was a kid I’ve been following our slow but steady progress back to the Moon. In the Apollo mission days, everything seemed possible as men walked on the lunar plains and people talked confidently about colonizing this empty but fascinating world.

We haven’t gotten back to the Moon in quite the way people expected back then, but there are steps being taken. The most recent mission, sent by the Indian Space agency, is the Chandrayaan-1. Before that were the Chinese and Japanese, the Europeans, the Russians and the U.S.

There’s no question that the Moon is a fascinating place. We know a lot about it from all the missions we’ve been sending and, of course, from millennia of studying it each month. The Moon has often been mentioned as an intermediate colonization spot before we send people to Mars. And, that makes some sense –to learn how to live and work on another world within shouting distance of Earth before sending folks on 18-month journeys to the Red Planet. It’s also been mentioned many times as a possible tourist destination and — something that perked my ears right up — a possible spot for a retirement village!

Human exploration lunar missions may seem academic to those who are growing up today without any direct memory of people walking on the Moon. I was thinking about that after I read about an upcoming show on National Geographic Channel called Direct from The Moon that plays on November 17.  It’s part of an Expeditions series they’re showing, and although I haven’t seen the episode yet, the video clips are very impressive and seem designed to get people excited about our future on the Moon.

The show description says that Direct from the Moon tells the story of human lunar exploration past, present, and future, and what we’ve learned about the Moon’s past. It features gorgeous shots of lunar terrain from a number of missions, particularly from the Japanese Kaguya mapping and survey mission. Ultimately the maps and images and 3D models and mineralogical data obtained by Kaguya will be used to plan the construction of lunar bases for future explorers. Among other scientists and explorers, the show features Apollo astronaut Buzz Aldrin, talking about his experiences and hopes for future exploration on the Moon he walked on so long ago.

It looks like a good show and I hope that it does the same thing for kids today that the Apollo and Gemini missions did for lots of kids in the 60s: turns them on to the idea of humanity’s future living and working on Earth’s nearest neighboring world.