StarTalk Radio - Cosmic Queries – The Future of the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab with Laurie Leshin

Episode Date: January 3, 2023

Could there be life under the icy surface of Europa? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comic Chuck Nice explore interplanetary missions, asteroid mining, and other exciting launches with the Director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Laurie Leshin.NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: https://startalkmedia.com/show/cosmic-queries-the-future-of-the-nasa-jet-propulsion-lab-with-laurie-leshin/Thanks to our Patrons Statton Broxham, Ethan Codyre, Ron Lanier,Nathaniel England, and Roger Lee for supporting us this week.Photo Credit: NASA / Jet Propulsion Lab-Caltech / SETI Institute, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons Subscribe to SiriusXM Podcasts+ on Apple Podcasts to listen to new episodes ad-free and a whole week early.

In today's episode of StarTalk, it's a Cosmic Queries where we learn all about the Jet Propulsion Laboratories through the lens of its brand new director, Laurie Leshin, a geochemist. An old friend, actually. And in there we learn about where we ever get to Europa. Is there a mission on the books? Spoiler alert, yes. And how will it get through the ice? Will it get through the ice at all? Might we find fish, freeze-dried or otherwise, buried beneath? And is JPL developing

another telescope? If it is, what's it going to do and why? All of that and more on this episode of StarTalk Cosmic Queries with my co-host, Chuck Nice. Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide. StarTalk begins right now. This is StarTalk. Cosmic Queries Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist. And I got Chuck Nice with me. Chuck, my co-host.

What's happening, Neil? How are you? So, we're going to find out about JPL. It's a storied place. It's been around even since before NASA, yet it is a branch of NASA. And what gives it special attention today is that it has a new director. And I don't mean to brag, but I'm personal friends with the new director. When you think of that, yeah.

All right. Yeah. So we introduce Lori Leshin. Lori, welcome to StarTalk. Thank you, Neil and Chuck. It's so great to be with you. What a thrill. Yeah, you're like spanking brand new in that position.

Just a few months, you know, this is like we're starting out the new year, 2023. Yes, happy new year. But you haven't been in there more than six months or so, right? Just about six months, that's right. Just over. Yeah. Wow. Well, congratulations.

How's it going so far? Good. It's, every day's an adventure. Congratulations. How's it going so far? Good. Every day's an adventure. We have weeks where it's like Mars on Tuesday and Earth on Friday,

and it's an astrophysics in between. So we've got all kinds of really exciting things going on. So Chuck, you didn't ask the right question. It's, Laurie, what debacle did you inherit? Yeah, there's that. There's a little bit of that. A little bit of that. A little bit of that. Yeah, so when I arrived, the first launch we were supposed to do

is a mission called Psyche, which is a really cool mission to a metal asteroid. And about three or four weeks. Wait, Psyche is the name of the asteroid? It is. It's the name of the asteroid and it's the name of the mission

because that's how we roll. And, you know, kind of keep everybody on their toes. Wait, which one are you talking about? Talking of the asteroid, and it's the name of the mission, because that's how we roll. And, you know, kind of keep everybody on their toes. Wait, which one are you talking about? But talking about the mission, it turned out when I arrived about four weeks later, we realized we weren't quite ready to launch. And so we were going to miss that launch window. Psych! Shock!

Shock! Psych! Yeah, so it's kind of the perfect mission for that, right? Like Lucy football, Lucy meat football. There you go. Yeah, and unfortunately... Now, this is super interesting, though, because you're going to a metal asteroid.

So interesting. Which we all know there's so many implications kind of wrapped in that. And what are you guys going to do? Is it just going? Is it going to orbit? What are you doing? It's going to go into orbit

around this metal asteroid and really map it. We have never visited a metal world, right? We visited rocky worlds, Mars, Earth, you know, other planets. We have visited icy worlds with the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and the outer planets,

you know, so-called, you know, icy worlds or ocean worlds. But we've never visited a metal world. That's because there actually aren't that many of them. Laurie, that's where Iron Man comes from. Well. It is also where Iron Maiden comes from. Oh, the group.

Yeah, that may or may not be in our level one requirements. I don't really know. Yeah. But we are going. So we're going to go later this year. We're going to launch in October. It's not totally scratched. It's not a canceled program.

And COVID had a lot to do with it, honestly. You can't build spacecraft from your parents' basements. You got to be... We got to be here and be together. And we missed some things, and we needed to get that right. It's much, having been involved in missions that launched, that weren't ready to launch and that weren't successful as a result,

it's much better to sort of call a timeout and say, let's do this right. And that's what we've done. So when you're ahead, you can call timeout on adults, right? That's right. When you're a parent, you say to your kids, but you're a director. Yeah, no, we're not putting them in a timeout. We're more in the football sense of a timeout.

Sorry, sorry, sorry. We call the timeout to say we're not going to launch if we're not ready. And let's go fix the issues, which were software issues, it turns out. Hardware's doing great. It's actually already in Florida waiting for, it's going to launch on a Falcon Heavy,

which is going to be really rocking. That Falcon is SpaceX. SpaceX, Falcon Heavy. So that's the one with three, like three Falcon 9 cores on it. So it's a big kick out to Psyche. So Lori, you're a geochemist. So are you a geologist that does chemistry or you're a chemist that does geology?

What do we think of you as these two professions stapled together in one title? Yes, that's exactly right. I actually studied chemistry as an undergraduate and then sort of switched into geoscience. So I really do kind of sit at the middle and I care a lot about life in the universe, but because I come from a family of doctors, my big rebellion in life was I never took biology in college. Wow. Okay. Yeah. That was like my big, you know.

Yeah. So, how did the space part of this become interesting to you? For me, it was as a 10-year-old girl seeing the very first pictures from the surface of Mars from the Viking missions way back in the 70s. And I grew up in Arizona, and I think there was just something about that landscape that really spoke to me. I wanted to reach out and touch those rocks, and that has stayed with me all these years. Wow.

And all these years later, we're working right now to bring rocks back from Mars. Not a very good advertisement for Arizona. I think it's beautiful. I disagree. I saw the's beautiful. I disagree. I saw the surface of Mars and figured, you got to get out of here.

That is gorgeous. Every day, I get to look at new pictures from Mars and they are awe-inspiring. It reminds you of home. Yeah, exactly.

I'm home. Of course, I'm going to end up probably after I retire in Sedona, which is about as Mars-like as you can get. So, yeah, I think it's just the thing. And what's your relationship with the Mars Curiosity rover? I'm on the team.

I've actually been on the Curiosity team since before it was even called Curiosity. It's going all the way back to the initial formulation of the science goals. I'm involved in two of the instruments. I was here at JPL well before I worked for JPL. I was here when we landed on Mars. It was actually on my birthday in 2012. We landed on Mars with Curiosity. Awesome birthday present.

Most awesome birthday ever. And yeah, I have gotten to work on our discoveries around water, in the soil, in the rocks. Great mission. Still going. Ten years later, still going. Still going. And so do you get to set priorities for JPL, or does that come from up on high? Because you presumably report to the administrator of NASA, the head of NASA.

And the head of NASA, I think, reports to the vice president, right? Or someone in the White House. So what's the chain of command there? How much autonomy do they give you? Well, that's interesting. How much autonomy do they give you? Or rather, how much autonomy do you take? Because I know you, I know you. So it's interesting, actually. I mean, that's a multifaceted question,

which I won't give you the long answer. But first of all, we're unique among, everyone knows about NASA centers, right? Houston, we have a problem and we launched things from Florida at Kennedy Space Center. Those are our government labs where all the employees are government employees. We are

actually a different kind of a flavor of that. We actually all work for Caltech. We're a federally funded research and development center. FFRDC, yes. In FFRDC, we are the only NASA center that is such. So we have a bit of a dual reporting relationship. We get to sort of, I think, our close connection with Caltech, a storied university.

It's great for our sort of innovation culture. Wait, who signs your paycheck? That's who we want to know. Is it Caltech or NASA? They do. Caltech does. Okay. Caltech does.

But all of the money that funds us flows through NASA. Okay. I got you. I have multiple bosses, shall we say. Okay. So it's really important that we align our priorities with NASA's. And also that the inventions that we're investing in and making help drive NASA's priorities, right? It's a bit of a two-way street. So we get to see kind of what's up and coming,

where's the science going, and share that with the science community, share it with NASA, and that helps drive what missions NASA ends up doing, right? So it's two-way. That's beautiful. And so you also are dually appointed. It's not just that Caltech signs your check.

You're actually affiliated with one of the departments there. That's right. I'm a vice president at Caltech, and I'm also a professor at Caltech in my old PhD department where I got my doctorate from a professor. They actually gave me an office on campus. It's my old grad student office

if you can believe that. That's pretty cool, actually. That's good. You get to go back to your old department and flex your muscles. That's pretty awesome. Unfortunately, this job takes a lot of time, so I don't have a ton of time to spend on campus. But the connection to Caltech is super important to us.

Excellent, excellent. And so just before we get to our Q&A, is there one or more, or what's your top goal for JPL in the tenure that you're about to? Yeah, I mean, so it's a really, so much of it's about delivering on our really exciting near-term portfolio. We've got, we just launched the latest earth science mission called SWAT, which is all about understanding earth's water. We are working on. Oh, thank God.

I know, right? What could be more important? I thought you were going to take us out. No, SWAT, Surface Water Ocean Technology. Oh, SWAT. Everything's an acronym here. Not Special Weapons and Tactics. Right.

No. Right. Surface Water. And we're going to launch Psyche this year. We're going to launch a mission to Jupiter next year that's going to focus on its icy moon, Europa. I want to get back to that. I have a lot of questions on that too, but keep going.

And then Mars sample return. Go to Mars. Come back for the first time ever that Mars round trip. So delivering on those missions is our highest priority. Get your ass to Mars. And come back. And then get back. And come back.

That's right. No one-way trip there. Echoing Kurt Vonnegut, Laurie, is this one of these situations where you bring the sample back from Mars, and the last sentence ever spoken in the human species is, Let's look inside. No, I shouldn't laugh. I'm not laughing about that. No, we're taking it very seriously.

As you know, Neil, planetary protection is like a whole thing, right? And we're taking it really, really seriously. I'm just giving you an excuse to talk about it. They want me to have some public hearings about it. Yeah, so planetary protection, you got people looking over your shoulder to make sure what you bring back is properly sealed and contained and everything. Exactly. And boy, you should see, I mean, I actually happen to have here a model of one of the sample tubes. Each sample is about the size of your pinky. So there are little rock cores

about the size of your pinky. So drilled out. And they're sealed in tubes, which are then sealed in, they're drilled out, sealed inside things that's sealed inside that and sealed inside something else. I mean, like, there's a lot of seals. Okay. Okay. I'm going to keep it safe. A little messy doll of a sample. Wait, no, here it is.

So it has seven seals. I'm resisting making seals. No, no, no. And then she opens the seventh seal. Right. Exactly. You ushered in the entire apocalypse. There you go.

So, Chuck, you got questions for my friend here. Indeed we do. Indeed we do. I guess we'll just jump in. And these are from our Patreon supporters. Yes, they are. Nice. Hello, Dr. Tyson.

Lord nice, Dr. Leshen. Does NASA have any plans for future missions to Europa? Jumping right into it. The fact that the cold, frigid world might have an ocean of water underneath is absolutely fascinating. What are the challenges of a manned or even a robotic exploration of Europa? And what concerns might we have for the potential of life in its waters. My man has all gone, he's gone full sci-fi.

He went all the way. He went all the way. He was just like, okay, are we going? How are we going to get there? Will it be us? Will it be robots? What about the fish? So you guys all in and that is a brilliant question all encompass-encompassing, that we will get

to when we return from this first break, StarTalk, Cosmic Queries, with my good friend Lori Leshin, recently appointed as the director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Stay tuned. Sedena, California. Stay tuned. I'm Joel Cherico, and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, CosmicMugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson. We're back. StarTalk.

Cosmic Queries. All about the jet propulsion laboratories from the horse's mouth itself. Lori Leshin, recently appointed as director of those labs in Pasadena, California. And Laurie, my life as an astrophysicist does not normally overlap the lives of geochemists, which is what you are. And we were just kind of sort of merged together now 20 years ago or so on a commission under then President George W. Bush to study the future of NASA. And we were assembled, we were sort of handpicked to bring all of the NASA portfolio together at one table, right? And so you're bringing in the geology and I'm bringing in some astro. We had some other folks. We had an aeronautics person, one of the A's, and NASA stands for aeronautics.

So I greatly enjoyed our time together there and the collaboration that that represented. And dare I say, you were just a lowly academic at the time, but you were like totally in charge of every one of those meetings. And I said, damn, girl, you know, go on. And the next time I turn around, you're like president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute and now head of the Jet Propulsion Labs.

And I'm trying to think how many other titles are left. Head of NASA. Okay, there you go. I'm quite happy where I am. But, you know, I mean, it's hard to believe it's been almost 20 years now.

Yeah, 20 years, yeah. And that was a really transformative professional experience for me. And I give you all the credit for my future success after just, I mean, you were there. What? No. No, it was such a great learning experience for me. You were already on StarTalk. You don't have to butter up the host. You were already a guest on the show. I was the kid. You don't have to butter up the host.

You were already a guest on the show. It's all true. But it was my second commission. That's true. Yes, you had done it. I was the kid. I was the youngest of the nine commission members. And it was a huge learning experience for me.

It was just clear that I said, this woman's going to be in charge of something one day. That was very clear. But you're right. Didn't we have a four-star general? Air Force general? We did. General Lyles, yes. Yeah, General Lyles.

And it was quite a pedigree. Incredible, incredible leaders across lots of parts of government, industry, academia. And it really showed me that by broadening my perspective on things, I had been an academic my whole life. And I was feeling the ivory tower. perspective on things. I had been an academic my whole life, and I was feeling the ivory tower. And the idea of ditching my tenure and joining NASA, which I did soon after that, was really, came from that work. Yeah, sometimes it's a calling, right?

It is. And not literally a phone call, but the universe beckons, and you replied. Yeah. So, Exo, we're glad to have you there. Thank you. So, we're getting back to the question that we dangled right in front of all three of us. What's the person's name again, Chuck? It's Jonathan Kuhl or Kuhl? K-U-H-L. Kuhl. Okay.

Kuhl or Kuhl? Kuhl. He's probably Jonathan Kuhl. Kuhl. Yes. I'll get the letter on social media. Chuck, my name is K is Cool, as in Joe. Joe Cool. So tell us about Europa, because that question was all about everyone's favorite moon of Jupiter. It is so exciting. So literally right now,

as I speak to you, our first dedicated mission to Europa is sitting in our high bay, in our big, giant, clean room here at JPL, being put together, being assembled and tested. And it's called Europa Clipper. It's going to launch in October of 2024. So less than two- Just a quick question. Is that room, this room you're describing, I've been in a room where an entire wall was HEPA filters. Filters, yes. Is that what this wall is? Yes.

Yes, exactly. To keep it quite clean. And everybody in there is head to toe in bunny suits, as we call them, to make sure that, you know, none of our schmutz gets on the spacecraft, right? No schmutzing. You don't want to discover the coronavirus on Europa and say, oh my gosh. Definitely not that. No. Nora, I, oh my gosh. Definitely not that. No.

And then it's like somebody somebody sneezed right before the launch. Exactly. Yep. And so we're in there putting that spacecraft together. It's going to go to Jupiter.

It's actually going to go into orbit around Jupiter, but do multiple, a couple of dozen very close flybys to Europa. And with nine different sensors that are going to tell us about the ocean underneath the ice, about the thickness of the ice. So there's some places where maybe the ice gets really thin.

If there's stuff spewing out from the surface, we're going to analyze that with a mass spectrometer. That would be through a crevasse, presumably, or some kind of figure. Right, or some kind of crack, that's right. Yeah. So how thick are we talking here how thick um many kilometers probably even tens of kilometers thick in places but the question is see if there's water how do you how that's the question right so if we can find some spots where the ice is thinner that helps you with the follow-up mission which should be a landed

mission right we don't have that approved yet but we've been working on the technology to make it possible to go land on a moon of Jupiter. Mind-blowing. Are you kidding me? By the way, this is a solar-powered mission at Jupiter. You know, Neil, how much further from the Sun Jupiter is than the Earth.

Five times further, right? So the solar panels are giant. They would stretch from the toe to the crown of the Statue of Liberty. Those are big. It's the biggest thing we've ever built at JPL. So Jupiter is five times farther away, so it's receiving 1 25th of the sun's intensity. So if you're going to try to get the same power you would have hanging out at Mars, but at Jupiter, your panels have to be 25 times bigger.

Big. Pure and simple. Right. So it's a beast. It's a beast. And then the spacecraft itself with nine different sensors, which, of course, the scientists want all nine to be running every time you fly by Europa. So it's quite complicated. fly by Europa. So it's quite complicated.

And the radiation environment at Jupiter is really harsh and nasty, which is one reason why probably the surface of Europa is not a very habitable environment. But down in the ocean, who knows? Could there be something swimming around? Where it's shielded. Yes, it's shielded. It's nice and, you know,

ocean-y down there. So I've seen close-up photos of the surface of Europa where the ice looks like it has cracked and then refilled and then froze again. So if it had cracked, that means water from below seeps up to the surface and then freezes again. So could you have freeze-dried fish right there in those cracks? You could. You could have freeze-dried organic-based something. Organic fish.

Fish is Say it. Say it. Fish. Fish is pretty advanced. I'd be happy with algae. Like, pool algae underneath the ocean and then you freeze some algae. Raise your expectations. Yeah. Alright. Find serpents, eels, whatever you want. Loch Ness Monster. There you go.

Oh, that'd be cool. That'd be totally cool. So that seems to me that if you can't dig through kilometers of ice, you could at least scoop up something from one of the fissures. Exactly. And so even from orbit, we think there is some outgassing going on that we can look for organic molecules and try and understand what's happening there. And then with a lander, hopefully you can, again, dig into the surface and understand what's happening.

So I don't mean to brag, but I had a very brief cameo in a movie called The Europa Report. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So it was a movie. And they just asked my permission to quote me from a media interview that I was in. So I didn't have to perform for it. So I didn't have to perform for it. And they just got me saying,

I want to go to Europa, dig through its surface and go ice fishing. Exactly. That's what I said. Nice. And they liked that. That's basically it. Yeah, I think I got like a thousand dollars for that.

That was nice. It's hard. That's going to be a challenge to get through that ice for sure. So we're already working on technology to help us do that. Yeah, so just to give a shout out to the film, it was like an indie budget kind of film. I heard. And it was called the Europa Report because they go to Europa and the entire movie are just mission cameras positioned in the cockpit and on the exterior of the vessel and on the helmets of the crew. So every next scene, it says camera three and camera seven.

So that was like sort of the, you had to buy into the fact. The vibe. This was a report given to Congress to the sum of this mission. So it's an interesting premise. So yeah, when science fiction is all up in your situation, you know you're on to an interesting subject. It is. And it's one of what we think now are many

what we would call ocean worlds in the outer solar system. Back when you and I were growing up in science, Neil, we were not thinking about habitable environments that far from the sun, right? Or certainly not on moons. Moons were like, who cares about moons? Right.

Let's go to the planets themselves. So it's a whole other world, literally. It's the beginning. I really believe this is the beginning of a sort of new wave of exploration in the outer solar system. We've got to figure out how we go there more often than every 20 or 30 years, right? We've got to figure out how we go there faster. I'm a little older than you.

To put it in context, when we were first going out to the solar system, everything was a flyby, right? We got to figure out how we go there faster. I'm a little older than you to put it in context. When I was, when we were first going out to the solar system, everything was a flyby. Yeah. Right. No one went into orbit around the planets. Voyager. Tours of the Voyager was Voyager 1, 2, Pioneer 10 and 11. Still going. Were all just flybys. So you had to like get your camera ready, you know, right? Chuck, give me some more, more questions. All right, let's keep it going. Let's keep it going. Fernando Colon says this.

Dr. Leshen, greetings from San Diego. My question is simple. Now, with the achievement of fusion ignition at the Lawrence of the Moor National Laboratory, will fusion energy play a role in space travel? And if so, how long will it take until it becomes viable as a main energy source for rockets? I love it.

Let's get this done. That's what he's saying. So that's a great question. I mean, it's a huge congratulations to the NIF team up at Livermore. That is a huge achievement. And it's a huge congratulations to the NIF team up at Livermore. That is a huge achievement. And it's like step one, step 0.1 on the road to doing what is being asked about because it got a long way to go to try and get that scaled.

But you got to start somewhere. And they've been working towards this milestone for years. So congrats to them. So in space, we now use fission energy. We do use nuclear energy, but it's of a different kind, right? We use radioactive things like plutonium that actually produce energy when they split apart into other atoms. So that is today available to us. And we, in fact, use it extensively.

Our Mars rovers use it. We use it out beyond Jupiter. You really can't do solar power. So we've used it on missions like Cassini and Saturn. But wait, but you're getting that energy a little bit for free because the plutonium naturally decays. Correct. So you just send the plutonium and the blob of it gets hot. The hard part about that is just concentrating the plutonium and the blob of it gets hot. The hard part about that is just concentrating the plutonium, right? You've got to separate it out and get it ready. But those are not sitting in a nuclear reactor. They're just their own thing.

So that's kind of like free to free. So now, but with a fusion, it seems like you've got to get that to happen. Yeah, I mean, I think it it's gonna be a while as the is the honest answer to the question because yeah nobody quite knows how to scale beyond the little tiny bit that they were able to do yet but but you gotta start somewhere and uh and the sun knows how to do it so you know your son never had any trouble making that happen yeah so chuck time for another one keep going here we go we go. This is Alan of Wales. Oh, excellent.

And so Alan says, Dr. Tyson, Dr. Leshen, and Chuck, it is amazing to see the Space Launch System successfully orbit the Orion capsule and to see it safely return to Earth. But really, what grounds does NASA have to continue to build expandable launch systems? Agreed, massive profits, no doubt, made supplying this one-time throwaway equipment. But does NASA have any plans to build reusable systems like commercial companies have already successfully deployed?

Well, Lori said she's not using a NASA vessel. She's getting launched on a Falcon. How much of the Falcon Heavy is reusable? It depends on what you're launching. In some cases, they actually will fly two of the

boosters back. They've done that with Heavies. In some cases, you want to take every last bit of fuel out of that reusable rocket, and so you actually use it in an expendable mode. So that's an option for us as well. Just to be clear, in case people don't realize, if you're going to bring the boosters back,

you launched them with fuel. Yeah. That did not participate in continuing to send your payload. Correct. To its destination. So you're using up weight. Yes. In order to bring the thing back. So there's quite the interesting economic trade-off there.

Right. Between the reusability and the cost of your mission. But I think Artemis was a huge success, and it's just great to see that launch. I mean, in some ways, that program saw its origin from the work that Neil and I did together on the commitment back in the day, right? It was a commission on the future.

That was all about what's going to come after the shuttle. On the future of the U.S. space exploration program. So we're proud to see that flying. Right, right. Nice little humble brag happening here. No, stop. Dang right. Take a little credit.

There you go. All right, Chuck, slip in another question before we go to break. All right, here we go. This is Adam Acra, who says this. Hello, Dr. Laurie, Neil, and Mr. Nice. I've always been fascinated by the thought of going to another planet. Do you think that this is feasible in our lifetimes? Well, Adam, we don't know how old you are, but...

If he's 89, you better say it. The answer is no. He says, at least, at the minimum, to see another human being make it to Mars. And for your reference, I'm 50 years old. Okay. Oh, good, good. Okay. That's a young step.

JPO is completely robotic. Robotic. Right. So you could say we're already on Mars. We are. And these sides are over. So do we're already on Mars. We are. We've jumped down and the size are over. But so do we need people on Mars? What do you do with people?

And do the people learn anything from all of your efforts and orbital trajectories and orbital inserts? How much shared insights is there between those two communities? I mean, if you look at the history of JPL, I mean, there's a lot of ways to answer this, but one of our very first forays into deep space was on missions like Ranger and Surveyor, which paved the way

for astronauts to go to the moon 50 years ago. Yes, of course. Yes. And today, that way is being paved. But just for those who don't know, those two missions are photographed in high detail the surface of the moon so that we could judge what might be the best place to land. We had no idea.

No idea. Not only the safest place. The first place we just tried to crash it in, we missed a bunch of times, by the way. Right. As we were getting started. Oh, I didn't know that. We were literally like, whoops, missed the moon. Darn it.

And it's true. There's a lot of good stories around here. You want to land safely, plus you want to land where there's some interesting geology. Right? That's right. What's the point? But we didn't even know where the lander's going to sink into the lunar dust. There was all kinds of stuff, basic stuff. And our rovers on Mars and landers are paving the way today for human exploration.

And Mars sample return, which is actually going to be the first mission to make the round trip to Mars, is a big one. And actually launching something from the surface of Mars that comes back to Earth. So, we're absolutely paving the way. I'm optimistic that in, was it Adam? I'm sorry, Adam's lifetime, that we will see people on Mars. And I'm bullish on what they can do. As a geologist, if we look at what one of our rovers does in a day, and they've actually done some tests around this, a human could do that in a minute or two, right? Kind of go somewhere, look around a bit, try to figure. And how fast do the rovers rove?

Oh, you know, Curiosity goes about as fast as a human can walk. So it's reasonable, but not very fast. Perseverance, who's there now, is a bit zippier, so can go a little bit faster. It's still going to be slow on, like, it's not race car time, right? So, yeah.

Rover races, that's how you know we're in the future. Yeah. Lori, we've got to take a break, but when we come back, we'll continue. And we might even go into a lightning round of Cosmic Queries on StarTalk with the freshly minted director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Lori Lesher. We'll be right

back. We're back. StarTalk Cosmic Queries. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. We've got the newly minted head director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratories, a branch of NASA, which is also, in a way, a branch of the California Institute of Technology, Caltech, in Pasadena, California. Ensuring that it has an unending access to academic excellence. Brilliance, yeah. That Caltech only knows is academic excellence. So, Lori, do they let you jump onto social media all by yourself

or do you have to vet what you post? Because people want to follow what you do. How do they do that? I am at Lori of Mars on Twitter. Wait, wait, wait. Laurie what? Laurie of Mars. Laurie of Mars?

That is my Twitter handle. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Laurie L-A-U-R-I-E of Mars. Yes, of Mars. Okay. I'm still on Twitter.

I'm like hopeful. You're getting bumped off. Okay. No. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a ton of JPL social media too on almost every platform you can imagine. And so what's JPL's handle?

At NASA JPL. NASA JPL. Okay. All right. Very good. Then there's all, lots of our missions are tweeting. You know, actually Mars Insight is a good example. We just came to the end of mission of Mars Insight recently, and it put out

kind of a last tweet. My power's getting low. I mean, honestly, I get a little teary-eyed. It speaks in the first person. It does. I'm exploring Mars. Our rovers are tweeting. There you go. Mark Watney, we're coming for you. Yes, that's right.

Hang on, man. Yeah. Always hard to see one come to an end, even though it lasted, far outlasted its mission, design. Its expiration date, yeah. So, Chuck, let's maybe do a lightning round in this segment. Sure. So, Lori, you just have to answer quickly, okay?

All right. And shut me up if I interrupt, okay? So, Chuck, go. All right, our friend me up if I interrupt. Okay? So, Chuck, go. All right. Our friend Kevin, the sommelier, says, Congratulations, Dr. Lashen, on your directorship. Having a background in geochemistry, I'm sure the asteroids and comets are of great interest to you.

How likely is it to capture one and harness its resources within the next 25 years? And to celebrate your new role, I would recommend a bottle of Laurent Perrier Rosé. Ah. Well, thank you for the recommendation. Laurent Perrier, it's a sparkling wine. It's a sparkling rosé. Yeah, it's a sparkling. Oh, I love that.

It would be rosé because it's made from the Pinot Noir grape, but not left too long in contact with the skin. I'm a huge fan of the Brut rosé, I will tell you. Thank you for the recommendation. He's a great sommelier. He knew this without even meeting me.

Exactly. It's fantastic. Perfect. Come, I could use a personal sommelier. No, I'm actually married to one. That's good. Hey, asteroid. So, you know, capturing... Yeah, when are we going to get rich off of asteroids? Oh, look, I think near-Earth asteroids, exploring them

for resources and learning to live more off the land out in space is really important to keep pursuing. It's a huge challenge. 25 years is probably about the right kind of time frame to be thinking about. Okay. And how about comets?

Is there any value to the water that's on them? Boy, we don't know enough about the surface of comets yet, but probably somewhat less valuable would be my initial take. Relative to the metals and other things. Okay. But we have so much more to learn. Unless you're thirsty in space, then... You always want some water, that's true.

Or just bring some Brut Rose. Or you do what they do on the space station, just recycle your pee. I think we'll be doing that. That's a whole different kind of Rose. That's a different question. All right, Chuck, keep it coming. All right, this is... it coming. That was good.

All right, this is... Good answer there, Lori. Nice and quick. Thank you. Our friend Y. Kos says this with quite an attitude, I might admit. From the Russian Luna and 2-3 missions in 1959, when it landed and crashed and orbited the moon, and the manned Apollo program in the 60s,

to the Chinese Chang'e 5 capstone orbiter, and the Korean Dernuri orbiter. There have been many, many moon missions. What makes the Artemis program so particularly interesting? Well, I think the goal of Artemis, and again, JPL doesn't have a huge role there, although we're involved on, we did all the communications with Orion

once it went beyond near Earth. So we run the deep space network for NASA. So we're the ones who are talking to Orion. Those beautiful pictures you saw coming back of the Earth and Moon, those came through our deep space network. But the goal of Orion is that, you know, the presence that isn't just about flags and footsteps.

It's about learning to really live on other worlds. And none of those robotic missions have done that. And really to have a sustained presence out in the solar system, the moon is a great training ground. Yeah. The blunt answer is Artemis is putting people back on the moon. Yeah. Everything else is a robot.

There you go. People. There you have it. Humans. Great answer. And the first one. Great answer. And personally caught.

He thought he had you. He thought he had you. Yeah, he was coming at it like, yeah, I got her now. That was a great answer. All right. This is Christopher Bax. He says,

Howdy, everybody. My question is about the future of spacecraft propulsion. Are there any promising new technologies and development that you think will revolutionize future space missions? So, fusion, we've agreed, is pretty far off, at least as an engineering solution.

But NASA's been involved in some stuff, right? Sure. I mean, you know, we're continuing to do more things like solar electric propulsion. There actually is, we're testing some green propulsion technologies on one of our very small lunar robotic missions that we just launched called Lunar Flashlight.

That, you know, I think that's an interesting thing to think about, especially with the number of launches that we're doing as a planet. Is that a solar sail? No, it's not. It's a different kind of chemical propulsion. Okay.

Which is, I think, as much as I know. Okay. Rocks. I study rocks. Did I mention that? That's hilarious. Stationary rocks. Yes.

Right. No, but the point is NASA does presumably have an entire sub-industry within itself thinking about propulsion. You bet. You bet. Absolutely. We work a lot on solar electric propulsion here. There you go. All right.

There you go, Christopher. Your answer is we're working on it. Yeah. All right. So this is Corey Allen says, hello, Dr. Leshen. This is Corey from Minneapolis. If we parked a satellite with a high-powered laser in orbit around an icy moon like Europa or even Enceladus, could the laser burn a hole into the surface in which a small probe could be dropped?

Would this not be easier and less intrusive than drilling into the ice? Thank you all. Love the show. First of all, let me just say this. Corey, you would make a great Bond villain. Space laser. Giant space laser. Giant space laser. The laser, yeah. Yeah. So, the

interesting... So, good one, Corey. Thank you. Very creative. And we love those kind of creative ideas at JPL. We like to think about them. Turns out getting through the ice at a place like Europa is really hard because it tends to want to close up on itself, right? Right. casing inside the hole, right? And doing that down through lots of deep ice is hard. So a from space solution there, I don't think would work. I'd have to think about it a little bit more, but I love the creativity. Yeah, I'd like that, Lori, the way you said that, because thinking about it in real time, you can melt the top little bit, like let's say a few centimeters and there's a little puddle, right? But it wants to refreeze. Yeah.

So you have to keep heating it to prevent that from refreezing while you melt the next few centimeters. Right. Right? Right. And now that you've got that melted, you need the heat to keep that liquid while you melt the next few centimeters. So I don't know if just a single laser pointing down would accomplish this. Because you're fighting against nature,

which just wants to freeze the whole damn thing over. Right. And once you get deep enough, the pressure, you know, it just wants to close up on itself. So we actually have some colleagues at Caltech working on this. It turns out to be a really challenging problem. You need a perfectly vertical lightsaber. That's what you need.

Right through there, yeah. A lightsaber. Just let it keep going down. Yeah. All right. Um, take it. Messier says this.

Hello, Lori Neal and our personal ha ha physicist. Don't do that. Okay. Okay. Uh, ha ha physicist. Yes.

The ha ha physicist, uh, taken here from British Columbia. I was wondering, since gravity affects light, how does the Earth's gravitational field not affect the way we see Earth looking from outside of our own gravitational field and vice versa from inside gravity when we're looking from another planet? That sounds like a Neil question to me.

I think that's an astrophysicist question. when we're looking from another planet. That sounds like a Neil question to me. I think that's an astrophysicist question. Earth, as big and as massive as it is, it is vanishingly small in its effect on gravity and its effect on the light in its vicinity to not have that matter at all. To either we looking out from Earth or from outside Earth looking in. As we start getting more and more dense and massive,

like towards a black hole, then it completely distorts the visual environment. Not only looking out, but also looking in. So yes, that happens, but you have to be way more massive than Earth is. So yeah, don't worry about it. Wow. Great answer. Good. Cool, cool, cool, cool. massive massive than Earth is so yeah don't worry about it wow great answer good

cool cool cool thanks for jumping in on that one Neil that's fine you're my personal astrophysicist today I got your back

Lori okay alright here's Stephen Smith Stephen Smith man we are moving along this is the

fastest lightning round we've ever had okay Lori's badass that's why I knew that we We knew that. Maybe you'll have me back. Stephen Smith. Yeah. Stephen Smith says this. Hey, y'all. It's Steve

here from just outside Worcester. I guess that's Massachusetts. Worcester. Worcester. Worcester. Is that how you say it? Yeah. Worcester. Worcester. Wait, that's Lori's old stopping ground. It is. I lived there for eight years. Wonderful. W-P-R. Wicked. WP on. Wicked cool.

All right. Wicked cool. He says, Dr. Lorry, has there been any progress in creating an ion space engine for interplanetary? Which is pretty cool. Yeah. Yeah, very cool. I don't know about the engine side, but we are thinking a lot about missions

that go beyond the solar system. I do think it's on the frontier. I think you'll see in the coming year, you know, more discussion about that. And of course, I have to use this opportunity to give a shout out to our interstellar voyagers, Voyager.

Right? The Voyager missions are on the edge of the solar system right now. They're the farthest human-made thing that has ever been sent anywhere. And we still talk to them

every single day. They launched 40... Oh, I thought they cut the... Oh, I thought they stopped it. They launched 45 years ago. There's going to be 50 in another four years or so.

That's so sweet. They are still going. They got that golden record on there, Neil. You know about it, right? And if any aliens are out there spinning the disc, they'll find out about us. So interstellar travel, I think, is, you know, interstellar exploration is definitely on the horizon.

Okay, by the way, but the question actually asked interplanetary, but I think they meant interstellar. Oh, that is not how I interpreted it. Sorry. As did I. Interplanetary is cool. And I just love the idea of the aliens finding that disc and playing it and going, this is the worst damn album I have ever heard. I happen to have a record player right here.

That was so nice. Wow. No, you got to go back to the Saturday Night Live skit. Because on the albums like Mozart, Beethoven, Heartbeats, Chuck Berry was on there. That's right. It's a melange of human culture and And sent it right to the skits. It was brilliant. Back in the 70s, where the aliens found the ship and sent a message.

And it says, send more Chuck Berry. That's right. Totally. Chuck Berry actually came and played on the steps right outside my building here at JPL. Yes. At the ADC now. As a celebration of that. Yeah.

Yeah. Damn, that's so cool. I know, right? Yeah. All right. Yes, yes. The 80s, you know? As a celebration of that. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Damn, that's so cool. I know, right? Yeah, yeah. All right, here it is. Maybe time for one more. Here's one more. And it comes from our friend

Alejandro Reynoso. Okay. Wow, good voice, Chuck. He says... Chuck, what the... Easy, buddy. The fact that he keeps writing back means he's not offended by what you've done. He's not offended by what I do.

But anyway. He's a regular. Good. Back to Alejandro Reynoso from Monterey, Mexico. Okay. He says, hello. Or should I say, hola. Go on.

My question is, what is the most important thing that you are working on that we do not know about? Oh, I'd love that question. What a great question. End on. What a great question. Here it is. I have two. I'll be really, really fast.

Because everybody knows about our Mars rovers and all the cool planetary stuff we do. But we also do amazing things in astrophysics. We are building the first major coronagraph, an instrument that's going to block the light of stars so we can image planets around them that will launch on the next big space telescope called the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, named after a woman, woo. And the other thing we do a ton of—

Well, just to be clear, all of our knowledge of exoplanets comes from their influence on the host star or because they block out the light. And so we don't actually see them. We don't actually see them. We want pictures. So you're saying you're going to build a telescope that is taking light away so that you can image the planet that's not lost in the glare.

Correct. It's like the size of a grand piano, this thing. It's amazing. And then the other big thing we do that I really want to mention is Earth science. Eyes on Earth. Yeah. We are driving the future technology

that helps us measure and understand where our home planet is headed. And we care really deeply about that as well. And so we've got a lot of new missions coming up in earth science, whether it's working on aerosols and their connection to asthma or looking at the radiation budget at the poles

or understanding earthquakes and biomass. And then we just launched, of course, SWAT to look at earth's water. Wow. Very cool. Excellent. So, okay, now tell us what's classified. We want to hear that too. I could tell you, but I'd have to kill you.

So, you know, that's not going to work. Well, we won't tell anybody. Just our fan base, that's all. We can all keep a secret. That is the sweetest way I've ever heard anybody say I'll have to kill you. Like your tone is like, you know, it was so inviting and warm.

It was so loving, yes. But I'll kill you, dear. You're a dangerous woman, Laurie. No comments. So, Laurie, thanks for being on StarTalk. Oh, my gosh. And we wanted to get you right when you started, and then I realized retrospectively how

bad an idea that was because you're just trying to get up and running. Yeah. And so catching up with you six months later in the new year, 2023, we look forward to all that you will bring to the Jet Propulsion Labs, maintaining and extending the legacy that is

so storied for that institution. Thank you. It was a thrill to be with you. Yeah, thanks. All right. All right. Everybody, it's been a delight once again. Laurie, we'll try to... Can we have a red phone hotline to your office for like,

if something else happens in the future, you can like. As long as I can have a personal astrophysicist line where I can call you. Two ways, my friend, two ways. No, it's just that JPL does, we all know JPL does the coolest stuff and we don't want to be too far from it. We know we're not because you're there. Thanks. All right.

This has been StarTalk Cosmic Queries Edition, all about JPL, past, present, and future, featuring Lori Leshin, its new director. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, as always, bidding you to keep looking up.