Off-Nominal - 130 - Crossfire Between Scientists and Engineers

Episode Date: November 2, 2023

Planetary Scientist Stefano Nerozzi joins Jake and Anthony to talk about science on Mars, from Sample Return to mapping Mars’ Ice!TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 130 - Crossfire Between Scientists and Engineers (with Stefano Nerozzi) - YouTubeJoint ASI/CSA/JAXA/NASA Measurement Definition Team for the International Mars Ice Mapper Mission - NASA ScienceWhite House requests $26 billion for NASA for 2023 - SpaceNewsOffice of Public Affairs | Noted Scientist Sentenced to 13-Year Prison Term for Attempted Espionage, Fraud and Tax Charges | United States Department of JusticeNASA starts reassessment of Mars Sample Return architecture - SpaceNewsFollow StefanoStefano NerozziMicascisto (u/Micascisto) - RedditFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

CLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, we're back. We're back with another planetary episode, Anthony. Are you going to get mad at me soon about how many planetary episodes we're going to do in a row here? What do you think? No, because every time that we do one now, there's like something that I feel a kinship with our guest.

I forget, what was last week? Now I'm forgetting entirely what our show was last week because I had podcast, Amnesia. What was last week? We had Gordon Azinsky on last week. Yes, and what was our thing? Why were we, we were buds at the beginning of the show for some reason that he, I forget. No, I can't remember.

People will remember, but we've brought, we've got an Italian today who's slowly cooking Italian American food instead of Italian food. It's right before we went live. I'm going to, I'm going to tell you how to cook gravy is what I'm going to do. Yes, yes. We're here with my friend, Stefan, Nerotsie. Am I saying that right now? How's my Italian?

Yeah. Oh, very good. Very good. Yes. I'm trying. I'm trying to be. I always try to be as cultural as I can. I guess this was an opportunity to start the show in Italian.

Yeah, you've done in French a couple times. That was the chance. Maybe when we get the Astronauticus guys on me, you can do that. Yes, that's totally right. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, so Stepano, my friend is here. As you can see by the map of Jesro crater behind him, it's a Mars guy. And I don't have my Mars outlet anymore.

So I'm sneaking Mars into the show more than, more. We'll see how that goes. So, Stephan, welcome. We're glad to have you here today. Thank you. Thank you. Honor to be here. Yeah, yeah. What do you want to talk about? Do you have any ideas? I'm just going to go through the maps in your background and see why you hung those up. No, no, please know, because the map is just there for, you know, for the looks. That's how you impress the ladies, right? Yeah, sure.

Yeah Cool Well Should we start with some drinks? Who wants to go first? Stephanie's on the lunch break over there Drink it on a lunch break Oh yeah

I feel like Yeah I just finished my lunch And I have a very Local beer here Right here Brod in Tucson Tour of Tucson I never tried this

So this This will be a first for me Test I'm sure it's going to be good though I'm here for the cycling too, Jake. You're just nailing it. You're finding people that are just synced in with me and introducing me. This is great.

Yeah. I'm, that's what friends are for, Anthony. I'm just trying to hook you up with good things in your life. I'm going to LPSC pretty soon if you keep this out. Yeah, pretty soon. We're going to have we marklings by Anthony Calangelo. Bringing it back, baby.

When you get that, when you get that Dylan Taylor money and you decided to just buy myself. He's going to bring a show back. Yeah. It's like when Bezos is like, I want more expanse. I'm going to bring it back. Did you ever tell him about the Mars House? Yeah, I've mentioned it a few times.

I mean, Mars House is legendary. That's awesome. Yeah. That's why you and I are friends. It is. It is. Thanks to Cassie. Cassie was the big bringer of people.

The instigator. Yeah. to bring her together. Yeah, I mean, a lot of friends from the Marcellus. It was a fun, fun way to hang out at that conference for sure. What did you got? Bring something good. Yeah, well, I don't know if it's good.

We're going to find out, but I just got something like real off the shelf today. So this is a helix hard seltzer. Look at that. Piafellata. Never heard of Helix. I think it's probably just going to be a white claw with a Mexican on the side of it. I don't know. That's good.

I got a lolly hop, a trog's lolley hop. Is that going to focus? Look at that, lolley hop. Look at those. I like the little lollipops. Double IP. What kind of percentage are we looking at here?

Are you in trouble today? 8.2 and I have a second as well. So I've been cracking this in the pre-show now, which Jake, I would like to plug because the pre-show people got a good pre-show today. We've been doing this live stream-style thing in Discord right before the show for like a half hour, 40 minutes. And offnom.com slash Discord, you can sign up and get in it. And today, we probably need your advice on this. We were developing our own asteroid mission.

We're working on the acronym so that it can be called the Booze Cruiser. And Jake has this concept. Jake's the PI. It's going to be an asteroid mission that just goes from the inside of the main belt to the outside, as like that's the orbit regime it sits in, and we just cruise through asteroids. And I guess topically, we've got the new binary asteroids Dinkinash out there that we just got pictures of. So Jake's developing his own asteroid program in the pre-show. That and we were trying to figure out what shadow government Dylan Taylor is setting up with space media.

And I don't feel like we made any progress on figuring that one out. No, we didn't. We haven't unpack that 40 J.S yet. Yeah. But we're going to do Mars stuff today, obviously. So I don't know, where do you want to start? We had a couple of Mars topics kind of on the burner. I mean, I really wanted to talk to somebody about Mars sample turned

because there's all kinds of drama happening. And Stefan, I always appreciate when you give me a hard time. Troubling calming. Travelling coming. We need to be extremely careful here. Yeah, yeah. So I thought we were talking about that. And I know you've got some, you've done some work.

work on some of the other stuff going on. There's like Mars Ice Mapper, which I feel like hasn't been in the news very much lately, but like it was like some stuff happened and then it just kind of like, no way to talk about it anymore. And I'm kind of curious to see what's going on with that. There is a reason for that. Yeah. So I figure we have some stuff to talk.

And we should probably also just, you know, talk about what the heck you're working on because you've always got some cool research projects on the burner. So yeah, I don't know. Where do you want to start? Anthony, do you have a choice? I'm Mars. bias, so I have to get outside. I definitely want to hear about Ice Mapper, because I was always intrigued by it, and then

I have a foggy memory of it getting backburnered to some extent, and I would like to hear what's going on. Yeah, because it kind of felt for a while, like, I'll just be honest. Ice Mapper felt like it was going to be the LRO of humans to Mars. Like, it was the one that would get funded first related to the program about getting humans to Mars, and then it would just be out there doing its thing for years, like LRO has been doing at the moon, and now is finally maybe. going to see some humans in its crosshairs.

Ice Mapper felt like that, but maybe I had the whole storyline wrong. Yeah, I don't know. Maybe it's definitely like, can you just like give us like a broad like what the heck is the mission? Yeah. So it must be said that there is an eye before the MIM part, the Mars Ice Mapper, I think which is international. So it's really an international mission.

It's not just an American NASA. it's the Canadian space agency is very involved in it, like they are providing the radar. We can talk about that. Italian Space Agency, European Space Agency, Japanese Space, and basically all the space agencies are involved in it. Most of them. Yeah, and everyone is contributing a piece of the spacecraft and contributing expertise to it. And so when we did the Mars-Termost.

definition team work analysis that lasted like a good seven months, eight months, something like that. It was really people from all over the world. It was not just Americans. It was people from all over the world. In fact, that was an interesting process because we had to deal with all sort of time zones. There were some very early wake-ups, some late meetings, you know, that kind of stuff. And so, yes, essentially,

it's a mission that is shiftfully based on a radar, both a sounding and an imaging radar. A sounding radar means that essentially beams radio waves down to the surface. And these radio waves, go into the subsurface and we can look at, for example,

this stratigraphy of a planet, in this case, Mars, stratigraphy of ice. And it's also an imager. So instead of just beaming down, you can also look to the side and look at how the surface beams back radio waves. So essentially what is being depicted right here. This is one of my favorite diagrams. I love these diagrams admissions because you're like,

Is this an orbital weapon? Like, what is this? That's happening right here? There's just stuff everywhere. There's a communications network all of a sudden at Mars, which is the whole thing. Oh, yeah. This is pretty excellent.

Absolutely, yeah. So based on what kind of radio waves, like, we get back, and what they look like, we can determine a lot of the properties of the surface and the subsurface. And in particular case, this was, geared towards finding ice. That was the primary objective is to find shallow ice, where shallow means within the first 10 meters of this subsurface,

because it needs to be accessible, right? Accessible to both robots and humans. Still needs to be decided how the ice mining is going to be done. It could be entirely robotic. It could be human-guided, absolutely. But it needs to be accessible. So we are looking only at the first 10 meters, really. And the primary objective is really reconnaissance before science,

because, I mean, the goal is really to find accessible ice. And then with all the data that we are collecting for reconnaissance, then you can do a ton of science, of course. And you can collect more data of other kinds that don't necessarily help you with the reconnaissance, but can give you really, really important science in this case for Mars, right? So I think, like, I'm trying to remember how this is set up, but what was weird about this mission was that it was like,

it was in the, it was funded from like the human space flight side, like the exploration side, is that? Or, and then it, but it was managed on the science side, there was like, there was some weird setup for how it was like organized. Honestly, Honestly, I don't even remember the details and I try to distance myself from the economics and politics of this mission because I'm like, I don't want to get too involved here. Like I'm trying to limit the potential damage that could come from certain types of discussions and inquiries, right? but no yeah essentially it's something that came came from higher up of course congress was involved

and at some point congress also decided that this doesn't sound too convincing right that was one of the latest news not very recent but that was that was one development which is unfortunate But that is what they decided. It doesn't mean this mission is at an end, absolutely. In fact, still surviving. It's hanging around. I can tell that after the MDT that happened last year, MDT is the measurement definition team.

We convened again in a smaller group this summer to continue the work on this. mission and especially define the secondary instruments that would that would be very nice to have on the mission. So now the mission is still alive. It's still hanging in there, especially because again, it's an international mission, right? So even if NASA were to completely back out, I mean, the other space agencies haven't said anything. So, I mean, they're all still on board. So, I mean, I guess that if NASA decides to, you know, like, no, we don't want to have anything to do with it, then, I mean, then the other space agencies can decide, all right, we'll continue on our own. Yeah.

The radar is supplied by the Canadian Space Agency. So the bus, the main spacecar bus is supplied by Japan. So, I mean, it doesn't all depend on NASA, really. Name one other Mars mission that NASA pulled out of that still kind of went on with its program. Just name another one. Is there precedent or what? All I'm saying is we'll get back involved at some point. A war here there while we're back in.

Which amendment is the right not to answer? You are. You're right to say anything. You're so close to cooking gravy. You're so close. Yeah. Never had to use it, but. I find it, so like, this feels like it's like a microcosm of a recurring challenge that I feel like NASA has where you've got like part of this community that's like very objective focused on science.

Like we are here to do science and then to do whatever X science we want to do, we have to buy this. this, this, this, get these tools, fly these missions, whatever. You know, do, I'll spend these resources to get somewhere. And then there's the other half of NASA, which is, like, we're, you know, we're here more to explore or develop industry or all these, you know, other, like, non-science-focused things. And every time we try and, like, blend those two objectives together into one thing, like, it's just, it's bumpy.

Like, it's weird, right? And I feel like this is a microcosm that. But we talked about, like, last week we had, you know, Gordon-Zinsky on, and we were talking about trying to plan the EBA for Artemis 3. And it's like, well, you know, we're going to get a little bit of time. But this is ultimately like a tech demo and we got to, we got to handle all these kind of things. There's all this like other stuff that's like impinging on, you know, if pure science was a goal, like you just you're not going to achieve that. Right.

I don't know. I think it's interesting. And I don't really know what the what the answer is or like what the if it's even like is it even a problem we need to worry about or is that just like when you have compromises because everybody's working together. You got to deal with that and that's fine. Like I don't really know what I have to feel about that overall. But it seems to come up a lot. Yeah, I mean, personally, I think it's like it comes from two sides. You know, there's the scientific community on one side, which is contrary to some popular opinion,

not saying everyone thinks like this, but very often scientists are very divided on a topic, right? And this is one case where absolutely there is sometimes a lot of division or just differing opinions, not necessarily opposing opinions, just different. And in part, you know, you need to keep in mind that everything is funded by the government. And so, you know, sometimes there isn't a continuity in the idea. that go the flow through the government so people change people change their mind both in the scientific sense and the political or economic sense absolutely so so there's really many facets to to this problem right and honestly I think it applies to not only to now as it applies everywhere really it's it's kind of a problem everywhere yeah I think we we tend to

we tend to hear a lot from from NASA. Maybe we have a location bias because we are near or within the US. But I know that the same thing happens in Europe, absolutely. Although I do think there's like a very specific, like a specific to a space agency problem, which is like because the science side of it feels like it's very, the definition of like done on science is like much clearer. It's like we need to go and get, you know, these data under these parameters, you know, this many data over this temporal, you know, resolution. And, you know, and so like you define like, and they're just going to buy that data, really.

Like you spend some money and then you go get the data and then it's like check mission accomplished. Like it's very like easy to understand when you've accomplished what you want to do. Whereas, like, promoting the space industry is, like, so nebulous. This is, like, we're starting commercial Leo to make it so the economy is good. And it's like, uh, okay, like, did you succeed? I don't know. We're going to keep doing it, you know? And so, like, when you try and marry those two, those two, like, classes of objectives,

like, it's really weird. Yeah, it's, it's. in good part it's a social science problem, which is why lately, in the last few years, many institutions are really working hard on this, like on this social aspect of things, right? That's why, for example, scientific outreach is so important. If you can't show the value of doing something,

I mean, it could be the most important scientific question in the universe, the human history that you're trying to solve. But if you don't demonstrate that that is actually important, how it's going to benefit everyone, then it's pointless, right? No one is going to back you up, right? Because they don't know how valuable it is. It's only valuable to you.

Right? Yeah. That's how it goes. Can I ask a question about this report? I actually found the link to this report. So this is submitted to, and it's all the different agencies involved, right, from Italy, Canada, Japan, U.S. So how does this, does this something that happens on any mission, but this one's weird because it's shared by so many different agencies? Or is this, did this come out of the process that you had to give all this information to all these different agencies?

So you wanted to kind of like collate it into one thing to share around? That's an excellent question. It tends to happen on big missions, or like, for example, or cooperation missions, like Mars Super Return already got a couple of reviews. For example, one just came out like a month ago, something like that, right? Other types of missions, like especially if it is something that is entirely contained within NASA, so like a discovery class mission or a new Frontiers class mission, then they will have internal reports and that kind of stuff.

Some of them are going to be public. But usually, I mean, at least to my knowledge, I've never really been involved in any other mission except this one. Generally, they are different in scope and sometimes more focused on maybe on this side, or the technology more than the, in this case, the reconnaissance or the impact on future, on the future parts of the program, right? Because this is only the first step of the program to, you know, send humans to Mars, right?

So it's not a self-contained mission. It's part of something bigger, right? It's the first step of something bigger. Yeah. So there's that additional part of, like, convincing everyone, scientists, politicians, general public, everyone really, that we need to begin the program and this is the right step towards, you know, walking along the path, I guess. Yeah. Wow.

So why does it feel like this is such an obvious decision that's then caught in a weird limbo state? Because it's like, yeah, it's kind of like, no matter what, if you want to see humans on Mars or if you're, you just want a really cool follow-up lander mission or like pick a good spot to send a rover. Feels like this is a pretty, maybe it's just like a problem with where Mars exploration is at the moment that we've done a bunch of really interesting missions over the last couple decades. And now we're just staring at the sample return like black hole that it is in the budget line. And it's going to eat an unknowable amount of budget between here and when we get the samples back. And until then, we're not really sure what or how to fund anything else. Jake can take it if you want to.

Yeah. Honestly, I don't really know the answer. So go ahead, Jake. Yeah. Well, I mean, some of the things like that I've heard about this is like the, so again, we got these two sides, right? There's like a team that wants to use this mission to answer scientific questions.

And then there's a team that wants to use this mission to build data sets to prepare for human missions to march. So it's like those are like the two very, very broad. objectives with this, right? And there's a lot of places where that doesn't necessarily line up, right? Because maybe the, you know, the human side is like, well, we need to look at the ice rate close to the surface. And then maybe the science side is like, that's not useful to us. Like we need to go deeper to get, you know, deeper history or whatever to answer our scientific questions, right? So then you have this like conflict about what the primary objectives would be. So I don't know, like, if we need to go deeper. Their whole report is just the meme.

And then I guess like maybe even just from the human side of it though, like, you know, you're right in that we have had a lot of missions to Mars and we know quite a bit about it, especially compared to the other planets. We're sort of at the point where if we want to really keep answering new questions, like we need pretty significant rich global high resolution data sets to like really start attacking this from a quantity perspective rather than a quality. like it's beautiful to get one you know one sample from one place and explore it in real depth like you know a very specific point but having a global ice map would be very very good um but that's like it's almost like you're in it's like not admitting but it's just like you're you're making the case that we need to move to like a whole new regime of mars exploration so and so it's like a bigger it's a bigger case you have to plead it's not just like the next increase fundamental thing. It's not like, yeah, this is just like what we were doing before plus 10%

it's the right way. It's like, re-adagine everything. Like now it's time to like, Kim Stanley Robinson, like the reds and the greens and the blues, right? This is that. This is that. Like, oh, no, now. The Mars program that you knew, we did it. We finished that phase. The old Mars program can't come to the phone right now. Why? Because it's dead. Yeah. We did 20 years from from the opportunity rover to perseverance and it was great. We learned a lot. And now we need to move on the next thing. And it's like, oh, okay, like, that's a big change. Are we ready for that? I don't know, I don't know.

But anyway, it's funny, though, because if you think about this in terms of like, if you think about the way that you would, if you were someone just getting into this stuff and you were going to Google a series of questions, you would be like, is there water on Mars? Yes. Show me all the water on Mars. That's like the number two thing you do, right? Where is it all? That feels like such an obvious thing that then would help all the other things that you want to do in the future.

Yeah. I mean, we kind of have that, like, to various degrees, like, through a set. Like, what's the, are you in that swim team, Stefanel? Like, at that, uh, the, I wasn't involved. Yeah. Yeah, you're kind of just like basically, which distance did you do? Yeah. Okay, maybe explain what the heck swim means, so that I don't sound like a complete whack-o. Are you for US or for Italy? Where are you at? Oh, Italy, of course. Oh, fine. I remain true to my origin. Then you don't get the fifth of

Amendment. Swim is subsurface water ice mapping. Same thing. But using currently available data sets. So you try to get out the most that you can with the best techniques that we have available before we send something else to Mars, really. Essentially, it works the same. The goal is the same.

Try to identify, in this case, what is the likelihood of finding ice at a particular location. So we used a variety of different techniques like radar, thermal imaging, like morphology or text. textures, neutron, spectroscopy. It's getting fancy. What else? This is all that crazy derivative science.

You keep shooting. Every time I meet with you and see one of your posters, you're like, here is something where I deduced through like 17 levels of derivatives that there's all this ice right here. And I'm always like, my brain always melts every time to explain the methods to me. So that sounds like that. There's really a lot of components. that come together and each component is essentially yields a likelihood of finding ice at a particular place.

So then you merge all these likelihoods and you get a final score of how likely is ice to be present within a certain deft on the surface of Mars. And of course each technique is sensitive to different depths, different kinds of ice. So kind of a complex problem, really. Combining everything together is not as simple as just summing up everything. There needs to be some discussion about like what each specific data set or technique brings to this equation, right? Big error bars I imagine too, right? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. Well, yeah, so we could do that, I guess.

That's the alternative to having this mission. Yeah. Sometimes I feel very arrested development about Mars missions. Like, it's an orbiter. What could it cost $10? This is how I feel about some of these missions. Like, because when you compare it to any flagship surface mission, you're like, I don't know, maybe we should take a cycle and do five of these.

And then, you know, wait 10 years and figure out what the next surface one to do is. I am out. If I'm on a working group, that's what I'm lobbying for for the next little bit. Thanks, Scott Hubbard. How many times can we find water on the surface? Like, come on. You know, let's get some other global data.

I'm guilty. Yeah. How many times? How many times have you found water? At least one. Or underneath, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

It's interesting. I suppose this problem is not going to go away, right? Like, we're going to be dealing with this sort of contact of like. I mean, as long as we want to send humans to Mars, this is going to be the first question you need to answer, probably. Yeah. Okay. My theory is they just don't want to have another LRL because that was kind of strange for a while. the report or whatever was talking about how LRO was like the model for cooperation between science and human exploration because it worked out so well

I think the the awkwardness was anyone that was higher up than the LRO team explaining what LRO was well so we for a while we were thinking about going to the moon in like five or ten years so we thought let's build a really high-res orbiter to then pick where we would land on the moon and then we didn't do it for like 10 years and we just happened to have enough fuel in this vehicle that we could then use it for the time when we're really actually going to go this time we think if everything works out over the next five to ten years. It's an awkward thing to explain over and over again, is my only point. Yeah. And a few months ago, I found out that one of the instrument PI's was arrested for espionage. On LRO? Oh, I got to look this up. I got to do some Googling. You got the show for a minute, Jake. We should have led this. We should have led with this.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Wait, this was a while back, though, right? The story October 20th, 2009. LRO Chandrian 1 scientist arrested for espionage. Wow. Chandra 1.

I said it was Miner F. The PIA of Minerf. No, maybe in wrong. I don't know. Maybe there was a couple. It appears as this person, Stuart David Nozette, was trying to sell details of U.S. missile detection satellites in exchange for cash. So that's pretty good.

Yeah, yeah. He helped conceive the 1994 Clementine mission to the moon. Is he co-invest in China, 21, and on an instrument on the LRL? Wow. Wonder whatever happened to this? Yeah. All right. They changed the eyes and the guy went to prison.

Is this going to be the intro to our true crime space podcast? Yeah. Topical too. He was caught by an undercover officer posing as an agent working for the Israeli intelligence agency. This is a hot story from 14 years ago, whatever it is. That's the perfect time horizon for a true crime podcast. It's all resolved now.

He's ready to talk about it. Yeah, yeah. All right, we'll get on that. That's a good one. Okay. So, yeah, should we unpack March sample return next now that we've solved that one? All right. Oh, he's working on a memoir.

I'm looking at this computer age. He's working on a memoir. He'll be on the circuit. Yeah, he's going to go in the junket in no time. We got him on this show, 100%. we should bring him on the show and not bring it up at all. Just see if he brings it up. We're here to talk about Clementine.

On off-nominal history. It's pretty wild. Wow. All right. Well, let's go from Espionage Act to Mars sample return, I guess, Jake. This is a really good segue. Okay, so I mean, there's lots to talk about with Mars sample return, obviously. But mostly what I want to ask Stefan about is like the there's like huge topic of discussion around like whether this is the right, you know, expense because it's like a lot of money.

It's going to turn into a lot of money, right? This huge thing. And we know that the science is like pretty valuable. But like I'm finding it very hard to like quantify that. And I'm just, I'm trying to talk to more scientists about it now. just like figure out like, you know, how valuable is these 18 rocks or whatever it's going to be from Mars? And where the price goes up, where is the point where like your opinion changes from yes to no, it's worth it? That's the question.

If it's like a billion dollars, it's probably a yes. If it's five, it's like, okay, well, think about it. If it's 10, no, I'm really thinking about it. If it was like 100, you would just say no, right? So, like, I'm trying to figure out, like, where that happens. I don't know. Give me your... What you sound like right now, honestly, it sounds like you're on the highway to an X-Prize.

Like, how much would a Mars Rock be worth? Let's do an X-Prize for that. This is how they start. Nailed it. If, hypothetically, an officer from the Israeli intelligence agency approached you, how much would you sell a Mars-Roc for? Let's establish a price. That's the way to do this, Jake.

That's an excellent question. Honestly, I don't know the answer. I think more than a fixed bar, it would be kind of a continuum where I become less and less convinced about it, and then at some point, like, I realize, ah, no, it's not worth anymore. But, you know, it's not like,

honestly, I wouldn't even know where to begin to assign a monetary value to something like this. I personally know, without being involved, I mean, okay, yes, I have a map of Jezero right here. But I've never worked on Jezero.

And I'm not planning on working on Jezero anytime soon. So from a scientific perspective, I'm really removed from that specific location. But I can tell you that there's multiple high-priority science questions that have been the highest priority for or between the highest priority questions in the entire planetary science community for like what 20 years yeah yeah one the very obvious one is every decadal survey yeah yeah i was to say every decadal survey is it is mark sampera number one yeah like literally all of them yeah and and i mean the decadal

survey is the scientific community the planetary science community coming together and decided, okay, what should we do next in the next 10 years? And this happened for two decades already. So it's not something they decided one time and then 10 years later. No, no, no, no, no. No, it has been going on for 20 years. So there is clearly a continuous interest in the scientific community. And I think the, of course, the number one question is probably is their life,

probably was their life on Mars? and I mean you can devise a lot of experiments, instruments to try and find it by putting them on the rover but the technology, the volumes, the mass are limited.

Like there are, I've seen instruments that do one single job, like one simple spectroscopical analysis that take an entire room. They are the size of like a few rovers, and that is one instrument. Can you imagine putting like 10, 20 of those instruments on Mars?

No, it's impossible. So at some point, you need to surrender to the idea that either you find evidence right there on Mars with the limited instruments and capabilities that you have, or you need to grab a sample and take it back. Now, doing something like this for an asteroid is relatively easy. not too expensive, fortunately. And so we are doing it, and it's awesome. It's absolutely important.

I personally think that the next step is, yeah, to grab it from another planet. We grabbed a bunch of samples from the moon. We are starting to grab a bunch of samples from various asteroids. One more interesting than the other. I think the next step is getting something back from Mars. And, you know, some say, well, but we have Martian meteorites. Yes, some of them are even low alteration because they were not exposed to the elements on Earth for too long. The problem is that, well, first we didn't really find anything too interesting life-wise,

especially because the type of rock that we got was usually not the right type. It's like a magmatic rock. Volcanic rock is not like a sediment where there is the maximum likelihood of finding fossil traces of for life. Also, we don't know where it comes from, which leads to another big point, which is besides the question, you know, was there ever life of Mars or, in general, on another planet, is, you know, besides all the question about,

okay, what is the geology of Jesero? Another big question that often goes overlooked is what is the age of things on Mars, which is a whole new, a whole different topic, but it's still something that is quite uncertain, if you look at our estimates, and we might be wrong on ages of geologic units on Mars by a factor of eight.

I had no idea that this is breaking news to me. Some models predict that we could be off by a factor of eight. And there is no way to know how much we are, you know, correct or not, unless we bring a sample back and we do radiometric age dating like we did on Earth and we do all the time on Earth, or we did for the lunar samples. So if we think that Jazzero Creator might be, what, two, no, three something billion years old, I don't know, it could be eight times younger, as far as we know. So there could have been a lake on Jezero that was like until like, I don't know, a few hundred million years ago.

We could be off by that much. Personally, I don't think we are that far off. There are their estimates that are much more optimistic and say we are off by a factor of like two. Still, big time. It's like a solar system. Still big, right? Half the Earth's life. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, it's not just one single question. It's not just the life question is many other questions that apply to other places of Mars and arguably also other planetary bodies. Because if we can correct and judge and understand how wrong we were, if we were wrong, about the ages of surfaces of Mars, then we can correct our models for everything else, right? For Mercury, Venus, any other moon, right?

So it's also important for planetary science in general, for other planetary bodies. You know, the impact wouldn't be big, but still it would be an impact, absolutely. Yeah. I like to think about when we brought the samples back from the moon, And that was a like watershed moment for planetary science. Like everything changed because it's the first time you get rocks back from a different body than Earth.

And so like your sample size goes from one to two, which like literally like doubles your confidence. Like so like all, you know, the exact same how all these, all these models like just like realign themselves and all went in and now we have this sample from the moon. But like sometimes I wonder like was it really like a sample size of two because you have. of the moon, a leading theory of the moon is that it was just like when something hit Earth and it like broke apart. So it's like, it's like kind of like Earth as well. And it lives in the same part of the solar system. So like the solar system environment between Earth and the moon is pretty much the same like a solar system scale. So like it's kind of like N equals like 1.6. You know, like it's like kind of like a little bit different. We need to get that full other,

you know, different planet from a different place kind of situation to really turn the models on heads again. So like that that's kind of how I think about it sometimes but absolutely I think you're absolutely correct. Yeah. So okay so we've established they're important. Yeah. So okay so the other I mean the other big question about Mars sample turn that everyone listening is probably already screaming at the their phones for us to ask. Is this like is this the right like technical path to go down right? Because we're building this like very specific one-time use like very bespoke with all these international partners with all these like one-time pieces that fit together in this very complex puzzle landing

launching rodny vu returned earth right and it's going to take us i mean we're not going to see these samples i used to joke a couple years ago that when the decadal survey was coming out it's like yeah this decadal survey is going to talk about the next 10 years and uh they're going to say something about Mars sample return, but not much. But these samples are going to take so long to get back that the next decadal survey still won't be able to take into account what these samples. It's going to be two

decadal surveys from now before they can go, well, now that we learned this from Mars sample return, here's where we think we should go next, right? Like, it's a long, long horizon. So my question is, you know, is this the right technical path to go down? Or should we

fundamentally, should we just wait for technology to get better? and then, you know, do other stuff in the meantime and then come back to this. How do you, as a scientist, make those decisions? Like, when do you wait for technology and when do you just say, we're going to invent it right now and do it? Like, that seems like a really hard question. As a scientist, I would tell you, ask an engineer.

Yeah. No, no. You're not like the PI of Mars Sampertram, but you still have to, like, buy these products in a sense, right? as a matter of fact I've always said an interest in the engineering side of things

I try to put myself in the crossfire between scientists and engineers will be right there on the spot I mean I think that you know

looking at the technology that we have I think we can do it yeah I mean, we just need to send a rover that is going to fetch the samples. We can do that. I mean, we have already sent many rovers with arms. Some lenders have a skirt. That's good.

We fetched all sorts of stuff. That is, I think, pretty solid. We need a spacecraft to bring back something. you may realize I skipped a passage just up here you know that goes in orbit around the planet and then at some point it comes back to Earth we have sort of done this there is president of four spacecraft

that were orbiting the moon and then they were it was redirected to visit the Haleigh Comet this was done like 30 years ago yeah yeah yeah the I see mission. It was orbiting the moon, doing science on the moon, and then they realized, oh, no, we can do a bunch of science on the comet. Let's go to the comet. So you redirected the spacecraft. And I mean, we have multiple examples now from, you know, Zaris Rex, the Hayabusa missions like orbiting asteroids and then coming back from, you know, to Earth and putting the samples on a capsule and the capsule lens.

We have, we have, that is also, I think, pretty solid. The missing step, the arguably, the most difficult.

This one, I'm thinking this one. This is the helicopter, I would recommend. We need helicopters. We just need it. Helicopters are working. You forgot the helicopters.

Helicopters. Helicopters are working, right? So, so helicopters are working. If you don't want to use a rover, just use an helicopter. Put a, put a hook or something

and grab something. Just use an helicopter. Just use a little helicopter. Yeah. The difficult step is taking the sample from the surface and putting it in orbit around Mars. This is something we have never done

on another planetary surface. We have done thousands of times now on Earth, but we have never done anywhere else. that is a scientific challenge for which I think we have the technology but we lack the expertise simply because we have never done this before that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it

I mean all the time we are doing something new that we haven't done before and very often in planetary science we are successful with it so I think think we should try. I think we have the technology. We just need to sit down and work in it and do our best to make it work, right? And I think, I mean, honestly, yeah, yeah. The bangers, though. Which really translate this problem, I think, from from an engineering complexity problem

to an economical problem essentially means spending money which is essentially why Marsempor returning is getting more and more expensive. That's the issue.

But I mean, it's not the only program that is getting expensive. Every single program is getting more expensive. Look at basically every single mission. Europa Clipper, Artemis, SLS, I know every mission, every mission has, you know, or James Webb, I don't know. It doesn't have even to be strictly planetary science.

It starts with one price tag and then realize, oh, it's actually much harder to do it than we thought. And we need to have more money to do it. And I mean, what can you do about it? It's the nature of these things. When you do something new, when you push the boundaries, it's always difficult. You're always bound to find new challenges, right? Your description made me realize that in the most recent architectural revisions, they doubled the wrong part.

Like the two helicopters and a fetch rover thing is not at all the part that any of us are worried about and the rocket to orbit is. And I'm not sure if you checked in the reliability of the, first time you launch a rocket, like, just here on Earth. It's never good. I'm like, maybe we should have double that part. That seems like a part. Maybe we should double and put samples.

They're going to turn this thing into like a Sam launcher. I think there is a reason for that. It's the really expensive part, so it would double the budget. So unless you launch the rocket, like one rocket the first time without the sample in and just look at how it goes. And then if he goes bad, they were like, no, no, no, no, no. The single one is not going to launch.

We need to send a new one. Okay. Otherwise, I mean, if you put the samples of one and then your samples are gone. So, I mean, maybe you can put like half of the samples in one rocket, half of the samples in the other one. Or, again, you can do like one as a test. We'll pick them up later. I mean, at that point, straight up at that point.

That's the contingency sample. Right. At some point, right? Like, I'm probably not the most optimistic person on the timeline of humans on Mars, but at a certain point in the development lifecycle of robotic Mars sample return, you hit the inflection point where you're now just closer to humans either picking up those samples or their own. If everything goes well in space, like there is that point in time somewhere in the future. So the math you have to be doing is like trying to gauge that timeline as well and saying,

have we jumped the shark and we're now closer to a person picking this thing up. I don't think we're on that end of the spectrum yet. Some people think, oh, you know, next decade we're ready to roll. I'm like, we're not even going to land on the moon probably until 20 30 hours at this point. But it is, you know, 20 years down the line. That's like human exploration of Mars. That is I think one challenge for which I don't think we have all the technology yet.

Just the trip to get there is an issue without even landing humans on Mars or having them depart. It's just the radiation shielding, radiation shielding, having humans on confined space. Okay, yes, we have the space station, but the space station is right there. They know that they can, if something goes wrong, they can come back any time. they can chat with their family and friends all the time, with mission control all the time. When you're halfway to Mars,

the delay time is going to be five, ten minutes. If something goes wrong, that's it. I mean, what's ever went wrong with launching a rocket on very soft dirt? When's that ever gone poorly? Has that been okay? I wonder if there was ever a human exploration mission to another planetary body where something went wrong.

There's like time or two, you know. First one or two is fine. You get to the third, things start to go haywire. Yeah. But it is interesting to think about because at some point, right, between now and forever, there is a point when you're closer to humans picking stuff up and getting back.

Yeah. Which is like, should be, in my view, should be clarifying to the, the architecture to say, we have to keep this simple enough that we never approach that point. Because if we've approached that point, I feel like then the humans to Mars part is forever away. If we're going to stumble that poorly into that timeline of Earth, I don't even know how far away humans on Mars would be at that point. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of how I've always thought about it too. And this, I'll do the callback to the beginning of the show.

basically it's just like when you're weighing the scientific objective, get me the rocks versus like the more nebulous like it developed the industry so that we can send people to Mars. Like you're trying to like measure which one's easier and when's when are they going to take, you know, so like at some point like this, you know, the scientific community, which is like our interests or the science part of it, they have to be like, well look, like I don't know how long it's going to take to have a fully functional starship where I can just go to Mars and get the damn rocks myself. Like I don't, it's coming at someday. I don't know when it's going to be. I can do this now

and like maybe it's not like the best investment but you know what? Like sometimes I just buy a pizza and eat a pizza because I'm hungry and I need a pizza even though it's not the most long term best decision for my health or it's not the cheapest option or like you know sometimes I just eat a pizza you know like so that's kind of how I think

you want to buy the pizza sample return. Let's do you like we've got lots going on. Let's get a pizza and it's all this problem. A middle ground though Stefan was telling us rooms full of instruments to do a job. It's like, I mean, we're going to practice landing starship on Mars a couple of times before humans are landing on it. And that's about a room size thing.

So, like, can we just fly those 10 rooms there and nine of them will make it? And then, you know, let's see what, let's see what happens when we get to that. And the whole, the crane lifts the whole room down, you know? Stefan, how much does a room size spectrometer cost? It's a room. I mean, you know, it's one room. Yes, it costs. Yes.

It's any in the starship. It's good. recently a few months ago I was visiting one of these instruments. It's essentially a particle accelerator and there's like, I don't know, three in the world. Low budget items, yeah. There's like three in the world. Each one is kind of a prototype of itself. Like each time they build a new one is different from the others because they learn something.

Now you've got that. So like it's, I mean, yeah, you know, sure, you can put one of the bunch of these instruments on Star Trek. But one could also make the other point, like, okay, to understand how to land a starship on Mars, even as a test, maybe you should understand how to land a rocket to send a. and pull back to Earth on Mars and then launch it back, right? There's a lot you can learn from both the landing and the departure, you know, the take off to then practice with starship or whatever and then practice them with humans, right? I mean, let's look at the moon.

Before sending humans to the moon, we sent a bunch of lenders and rovers, right? Yeah, so we practice with it. All right. Solved it. We solved it. We solved our Zipafer and we solved our sample. Solved it. One hour.

See, this is the kind of productivity that someone like Dylan Taylor would like to. Just. We have never been approached by Dylan Taylor to purchase this podcast. Next time the president reviews the NASA budget or Congress reviewed the NASA budget. Just send in this, this video. Yeah, it's us three. It's us three. We're there.

Yeah, Canadian, Italian, and an American. We're good. We got it. Perfect. It's all of the good opinions. The International Mars ice mapper, ice mapper mission. We got it. We got it covered.

Yeah. I mean, you joke, but I think sometimes between now and when Jake and I are done being present in the space industry, we're going to be on some review board. I'm convinced. That's my goal for us, Jake. We're getting on the review board of something. I don't know what. I don't know when. That's my goal.

I mean, technically speaking, we are doing a. outreach and we are talking to the general public about the importance of science exploration. Yeah. So put us on, put us in coach. I mean, you don't have to be in the report. This is the report itself in some sense. It's so meta. So meta and uplifting.

We can offer significant savings to NASA and Congress for our reviews. Don't tell Dylan. Oh, wow. Good deal. Well, what we got coming up next week, Anthony? I'll put you on the spot. I already know. Should I just say it?

You already know because it's just a continuing this whole thing. We've been on the beat for a little bit. We're doing three in a row, three planetary episodes in a row. So next week, another close friend of ours, Tanya Harrison is coming back to the show. We love Tanya around here. She's up to some crazy new planetary science. endeavors up in Canada. So she's back in Canada now and

doing all sorts of fun stuff. So we're going to learn about what she's working on. There's some new news. New news. New news. New news. Once again, Travis and Jason Kelsey make an appearance on this show, Jake, and you don't even know it.

You just reference the thing that they do. And you have no idea who these people are. I have a riddle, Jake. I have a riddle for our listeners to noodle on. The next three shows, the next three Thursdays, I should say, have a tea involved. We've got Tanya, a T, and Thanksgiving. And everyone can figure out what the middle T is and they'll be pumped. So this is a little riddle, Jake.

We'll see if anyone can think of it by next week when we tell everyone was happening the following week, too. Send us your T's. Send in your T's. That's good. Better than I planned it. We're teasing T's here, yeah, T-T's. If people are like, man, this guy is the best, what can I do to follow along with this guy? Where are you sending people? That's a good question. Hit us up with a link. It's an excellent question.

I am very inactive on Twitter, the X thing, whatever. Very inactive. So, I mean, you can follow me there, but you're probably not going to see much. I am somewhat active on sometimes on Reddit. I tend to navigate the space subreddit, the science subreddit. So you may be seeing me there sometimes. I have the same nickname as on Twitter, Mikashista, which is the Italian for Mycashist.

I can write it in chat. I have the chat open here. Otherwise, Yeah, that's it, really. Nowhere. I have a personal website that I haven't updated in ages, but I keep promising myself I need to update. And of course, I mean, feel free to contact me on any platform

or you can find me on the University of Arizona website. You know, I think there is an email contact there. you can contact me, of course, absolutely. Happy to chat with anyone. You do deliver on your Reddit profile, I will say, because the first thing that I see is you recommending where to get good pizza on the Italy subreddit. So you've definitely delivered on that.

Like, just perfect. Perfect. Could not have been more perfect. Too good. We've got to end the show right there. Definitely, thanks for it. I tend to be active on the Italian subreddit as well. See you there, everybody. It's ringing out.

Bye. One, two, three, four, five, five.