Comets are small celestial bodies that orbit the Sun. Primarily made of dust and ice, they are thought to be remnants of the formation of the Solar System.

Comet PanSTARRS was visible in early 2013.

thinkstockphoto.com

Comets are thought to come from 2 places in the Solar System:

What are meteor showers?

One of the distinguishing features of a comet is that most of them develop a tail, known as a coma when they come close to the Sun.

Away from the Sun, comets are frozen celestial bodies that are hard to detect. However, as a comet comes closer to the Sun, the Suns heat and radiation vaporize its ice and dust. These vaporized gasses collect dust and stream from the center of the comet, just like a tail. This tail can be thousands of miles long.

While most comets passing by the Sun are hard to observe from Earth without specialized equipment, some comets are bright enough to be seen by the naked eye. A comets brightness is due to sunlight reflecting and refracting off the dust in the tail.

Comets usually have two tails, which point in different directions. The dust in the comet is responsible for one tail. This tail, also called the dust tail, tends to be broad and curved. The gasses in the comet make the other tail, called the plasma or the ion tail. This tail is thin and straight and tends to point directly away from the Sun.

What are asteroids?

A light year (light-year or lightyear) is a unit of distance and is defined by the International Astronomical Union as the distance traveled by light in a vacuum during a Julian year. It is approximately equal to 10 trillion kilometers (6 trillion miles).

Topics: Astronomy, Comets, Asteroids

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What Are Comets? - Time and Date

Comets are icy bodies in space that release gas or dust. They are often compared to dirty snowballs, though recent research has led some scientists to call them snowy dirtballs. Comets contain dust, ice, carbon dioxide, ammonia, methane and more. Astronomers think comets are leftovers from the material that initially formed the solar system about 4.6 billion years ago.

Some researchers think comets might have originally brought some of the water and organic molecules to Earth that now make up life here. To research this hypothesis, the Rosetta mission, which landed a probe on a comet on Nov. 12, 2014, is studying its nucleus and environment, observing how it changes as it approaches the sun.

Comets orbit the sun, but most are believed to inhabit in an area known as the Oort Cloud, far beyond the orbit of Pluto. Occasionally a comet streaks through the inner solar system; some do so regularly, some only once every few centuries. Many people have never seen a comet, but those who have won't easily forget the celestial show.

The solid nucleus or core of a comet consists mostly of ice and dust coated with dark organic material, according to NASA, with the ice composed mainly of frozen water but perhaps other frozen substances as well, such as ammonia, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and methane. The nucleus may have a small rocky core.

As a comet gets closer to the sun, the ice on the surface of the nucleus begins turning into gas, forming a cloud known as the coma. Radiation from the sun pushes dust particles away from the coma, forming a dust tail, while charged particles from the sun convert some of the comet's gases into ions, forming an ion tail. Since comet tails are shaped by sunlight and the solar wind, they always point away from the sun. Comet tails may spray planets, as was the case in 2013 with Comet Siding Spring and Mars.

At first glance, comets and asteroids may appear very similar. The difference lies in the presence of the coma and tail. Sometimes, a comet may be misidentified as an asteroid before follow-up observations reveal the presence of either or both of these features.

The nuclei of most comets are thought to measure 10 miles (16 kilometers) or less. Some comets have comas that can reach nearly 1 million miles (1.6 million km) wide, and some have tails reaching 100 million miles (160 million km) long.

We can see a number of comets with the naked eye when they pass close to the sun because their comas and tails reflect sunlight or even glow because of energy they absorb from the sun. However, most comets are too small or too faint to be seen without a telescope.

Comets leave a trail of debris behind them that can lead to meteor showers on Earth. For instance, the Perseid meteor shower occurs every year between August 9 and 13 when Earth passes through the orbit of the Swift-Tuttle comet.

Astronomers classify comets based on the durations of their orbits around the sun. Short-period comets need roughly 200 years or less to complete one orbit, long-period comets take more than 200 years, and single-apparition comets are not bound to the sun, on orbits that take them out of the solar system, according to NASA. Recently, scientists have also discovered comets in the main asteroid belt these main-belt comets might be a key source of water for the inner terrestrial planets.

Scientists think short-period comets, also known as periodic comets, originate from a disk-shaped band of icy objects known as the Kuiper Belt beyond Neptune's orbit, with gravitational interactions with the outer planets dragging these bodies inward, where they become active comets. Long-period comets are thought to come from the nearly spherical Oort Cloud even further out, which get slung inward by the gravitational pull of passing stars. In 2017, scientists found there may be seven times more big long-period comets than previously thought.

Some comets, called sun-grazers, smash right into the sun or get so close that they break up and evaporate. Some researchers are also concerned that comets may pose a threat to Earth as well.

In general, comets are named after their discoverer. For example, comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 got its name because it was the ninth short-periodic comet discovered by Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy. Spacecraft have proven very effective at spotting comets as well, so the names of many comets incorporate the names of missions such as SOHO or WISE.

In antiquity, comets inspired both awe and alarm, "hairy stars" resembling fiery swords that appeared unpredictably in the sky. Often, comets seemed to be omens of doom the most ancient known mythology, the Babylonian "Epic of Gilgamesh," described fire, brimstone, and flood with the arrival of a comet, and the Roman emperor Nero saved himself from the "curse of the comet" by having all possible successors to his throne executed. This fear was not just limited to the distant past in 1910, people in Chicago sealed their windows to protect themselves from what they thought was the comet's poisonous tail.

For centuries, scientists thought comets traveled in the Earth's atmosphere, but in 1577, observations made by Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe revealed they actually traveled far beyond the moon. Isaac Newton later discovered that comets move in elliptical, oval-shaped orbits around the sun, and correctly predicted that they could return again and again.

Chinese astronomers kept extensive records on comets for centuries, including observations of Halley's Comet going back to at least 240 B.C., historic annals that have proven valuable resources for later astronomers.

A number of recent missions have ventured to comets. NASA's Deep Impact collided an impactor into Comet Tempel 1 in 2005 and recorded the dramatic explosion that revealed the interior composition and structure of the nucleus. In 2009, NASA announced samples the Stardust mission returned from Comet Wild 2 revealed a building block of life.

In 2014, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft entered orbit around Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The Philae lander touched down on Nov 12, 2014. Among the Rosetta mission's many discoveries was the first detection of organic molecules on the surface of a comet; a strange song from Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko; the possibilities that the comet's odd shape may be due to it spinning apart, or resulting from two comets fusing together; and the fact that comets may possess hard, crispy outsides and cold but soft insides, just like fried ice cream. On Sept. 30, 2016, Rosetta intentionally crash-landed on the comet, ending its mission.

Halley's Comet is likely the most famous comet in the world, even depicted in the Bayeux Tapestry that chronicled the Battle of Hastings of 1066. It becomes visible to the naked eye every 76 years when it nears the sun. When Halley's Comet zoomed near Earth in 1986, five spacecraft flew past it and gathered unprecedented details, coming close enough to study its nucleus, which is normally concealed by the comet's coma. The roughly potato-shaped, 9-mile-long (15 km) comet contains equal parts ice and dust, with some 80 percent of the ice made of water and about 15 percent of it consisting of frozen carbon monoxide. Researchers believe other comets are chemically similar to Halley's Comet. The nucleus of Halley's Comet was unexpectedly extremely dark black its surface, and perhaps those of most others, is apparently covered with a black crust of dust over most of the ice, and it only releases gas when holes in this crust expose ice to the sun.

The comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 collided spectacularly with Jupiter in 1994, with the giant planet's gravitational pull ripping the comet apart for at least 21 visible impacts. The largest collision created a fireball that rose about 1,800 miles (3,000 km) above the Jovian cloud tops as well as a giant dark spot more than 7,460 miles (12,000 km) across about the size of the Earth and was estimated to have exploded with the force of 6,000 gigatons of TNT.

A recent, highly visible comet was Hale-Bopp, which came within 122 million miles (197 million km) of Earth in 1997. Its unusually large nucleus gave off a great deal of dust and gas estimated at roughly 18 to 25 miles (30 to 40 km) across appeared bright to the naked eye.

Comet ISON was expected to give a spectacular show in 2013. However, the sun-grazer did not survive its close encounter with the sun and was destroyed in December.

Additional reporting by Nola Taylor Redd, Space.com contributor

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Comets: Facts About The 'Dirty Snowballs' of Space | Space

In late March, a team of astronomers working on a space telescope mission called Neowise discovered a comet booking it past the sun, 160 million miles away from Earth. The comet, officially known as C/2020 F3 but usually just referred to as Neowise, is a 3-mile-wide chunk of ice and dust on a 6,000-year loop around the solar system. Its just one of thousands of space rocks discovered with the Neowise telescope, but its trajectory means that for a few weeks this summer it will give observers in the northern hemisphere a rare cosmic light show.

This is the most impressive-looking comet that I have seen since the 1990s with Hale-Bopp, says George Hripcsak, an amateur astronomer in New York City. Hale-Bopp is a comet on a 2,500-year orbit around the sun that made its closest pass by Earth in 1997. It was visible to the naked eye for a year and a half, and famously inspired the mass suicide of the Heavens Gate cult. (Although comet Neowise isnt quite as bright as Hale-Bopp was, it also doesnt appear to have prompted any human sacrifices.)

The best time to catch a glimpse of Neowise was in early July, just after it made its closest approach to the sun and reached peak brightness. The comet has grown noticeably dimmer over the past few days as it moves away from the sun, but if you havent had a chance to check it out yet, its not too late. Neowise makes its closest approach to the Earth on Thursday, and if you live in the northern hemisphere youll still be able to see it with your naked eye for a few more days. We asked amateur astronomers for their best tips on how to go comet-spotting.

What to Look For

Like all comets, Neowise consists of a dense nucleus made of ice, dust, and ionized gas that form a brilliant double tail as they blow off the comet. The Neowise tail is huge; it covers as much sky as if you were to place 12 full moons side by side. Seeing a tail that long doesnt happen very often, says Hripcsak.

When to See Comet Neowise

If you want to spot the comet, the best time to go stargazing is about an hour after sunset. Depending on where you live, this will probably be around 10 pm. The comet will be visible for about an hour or so before it drops below the horizon. It needs to be dark enough for you to be able to pick out the entire Big Dipper, not just the handle, says Katherine Troche, an amateur astronomer in New York City. If you can get away from the streetlights, your visibility will improve, but you may still need binoculars as the comet will become less bright over the next few weeks.

How to Spot the Comet

Comet Neowise is visible from anywhere in the northern hemisphere. But the night sky is a pretty big space to search, so amateur and professional astronomers have built a number of apps to help you find celestial objects, including the comet, based on your location. If you want to stargaze like the pros, theres SkySafari 6 for iOS and Android phones, but itll set you back $20. Free apps include Celestrons SkyPortal.

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How to See Comet Neowise Before Its Gone - WIRED

ROCHESTER, NY (WROC) One of the biggest science headlines of July 2020 has been the Neowise Comet that graced skies of the Northern Hemisphere for weeks on end. Lets dive into the difference between the flying objects we see in space here. We will go in alphabetical order.

ASTEROID:

This is an image of the asteroid Eros taken by NASA in 2000.

A rock material that revolves around the sun and remains in orbit. Think of an asteroid as a rock that hangs out with other asteroids in a large belt within the solar system inbetween Mars and Jupiter. You may recognize this from popular space movies such as Star Wars that frequently features asteroid belts or asteroid fields.

COMET:

This is a photo of comet Neowise from NASA. The comet was discovered in March 2020 and was visible most of July in Rochester.

No rock involved here, just a combination of ice, dust, and gas that is moving through space, often orbiting the sun. They originate from the creation of our solar system. A comet that is millions of miles away from earth can still be seen thanks to its tail. As it nears the sun, some of the material sheds off from the main ball of gas, dust and ice to make the tail that can extend sometimes for millions of miles.

METEOR/METEOROID/METEORITE:

A meteoroid heading toward earth turns into a meteor and will often burn up in the atmosphere, creating a shooting star.

An asteroid can break off into a meteoroid (picture above) that is just floating in space. This can happen if two asteroids run into each other. A meteoroid can also come from a comet. When a meteoroid enters earths atmosphere, it turns into a meteor. These meteor showers are common and can also be referred to shooting stars. If it gets all the way to the surface of the earth, it is a meteorite. Below is a list of common meteor showers that occur throughout the year from NASA.

Quadrantids December/JanuaryLyrids AprilPerseids AugustOrionids OctoberLeonids NovemberGeminids December

USEFUL MNEMONICS:

Originally posted here:

Space objects defined: The differences between comets, meteors, and asteroids - RochesterFirst

Design and illustrations by Micah Fluellen

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California mostly closed down again this week. The coronavirus has the state on the ropes, prompting the governor to roll back the opening of restaurants, gyms and salons for hard-hit areas. So where does that leave us? Outdoors, of course. Here are three things to do, starting with a spectacular fireball lighting up the sky right now.

1. Look for this comet in the night sky. Comets dont come streaking our way all that often, at least not bright ones you can see with the naked eye. Many get roasted when they pass close to the sun. That didnt happen to the Comet NEOWISE. Instead, the glowing beauty with a tail has been wowing watchers since early July. Space.com gives it props for emphatically ending a quarter-century drought of spectacular comets.

Last weekend, the comet was visible in the predawn hours. Now it has flipped into evening mode. So peel yourself away from binge-watching on Netflix and look up. If you miss it, this comet wont be back for about 7,000 years. Heres what you need to know to see it:

This photo illustration shows where you can find Comet NEOWISE in the night sky.

(Isaac Cabrera)

By the way, the comet is officially named C/2020 F3 and nicknamed NEOWISE after the acronym for the NASA space telescope (Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) that discovered it on March 27.

Read the full story here.

(Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)

2. See a California condor in the wild. Mike Maxcy had a twinge of pride when he examined photos of the handful of California condors that recently swooped into Sequoia National Park for the first time in a half-century. Two of the birds had been hatched and raised at the L.A. Zoo. You get that full-circle feeling, said the zoos curator of birds, who IDd the condors by their wing tags.

Its been a wild ride for Maxcy and others who worked on the massive task of heading off extinction of North Americas largest bird for decades. He joined the zoo in 1987 when the last of less than 30 birds left in the wild were captured and brought in for an ambitious captive breeding program. The controversial idea was to raise chicks, train them to flourish in the wild and let them go. Miraculously, it worked.

Last year, the 1,000th chick was born in the wild at Zion National Park. But there were many bumps along the way. Early released birds were electrocuted on power lines; others died after eating carrion laced with lead from bullets (last year California banned hunters from using lead bullets) or drinking radiator fluid.

Now roughly 300 birds soar in Southern California, the Big Sur area, Arizona, southern Utah and Baja, Mexico. An additional 230 thrive in zoo breeding programs. One day, perhaps a condor will again sail over Yosemites Half Dome, as it does in a scene depicted on the flip side of California quarters.

Until then, Maxcy and the zoo continue to release condor chicks and run captive breeding programs to bring back other endangered species, such as the mountain yellow-legged frog native to the San Gabriel Mountains that surround Los Angeles. And the faraway Bali myna, which has been diminished by the pet trade in their native Indonesia. Just 100 exist in the wild, but about 1,000 flourish in zoos around the country. We are Noahs ark, Maxcy said. Its up to us to keep species thriving.

Here are places to look for California condors in the wild.

Let plants inspire your yoga poses at the Sherman Library & Gardens in Corona del Mar.

(Sherman Library & Gardens)

3. Outdoor yoga in the garden. Need to be rescued from your Zoom yoga rut? The Sherman Library & Gardens in Corona del Mar may help. The Central Garden provides the setting for outdoor yoga sessions on Wednesday evenings this summer that include breath work, Hatha yoga and a meditation practice. Class size is limited to allow plenty of room for social distancing. Participants should bring their own yoga mat, a small towel and water. And depending on which session you pick, you can get a glass of wine afterward. Upcoming classes are set for July 22 and July 29, and cost $25 ($20 for members). You must register in advance and wear a mask to class. Go to thesherman.org or call (949) 673-2261.

(Wong Maye-E / Associated Press)

Airports around the world have been pretty much stilled by the coronavirus outbreak. But some people in Singapore are booking rooms at the sprawling Changi Airport just to visit. Huh? With its butterfly and orchid gardens, custom-made airport fragrance and glass-domed mall housing the worlds tallest indoor waterfall, the experience is considered the gold standard of international airports a stark example of everything its austere American counterparts are not, L.A. Times staff writer David Pierson reports. And yes, your chances are good of having a butterfly land on you inside the garden where 1,000 of them flutter around freely. The airports indoor tropical retreats havent saved it from the harsh economic reality of a 99% drop-off in passengers since April. Still, theres something quirky and mildly appealing about kicking back at a 130-foot waterfall inside an airport.

Read the full story here.

(Micah Fluellen / Los Angeles Times)

Over the years, many people have asked me how to make the leap from day hikes to overnight backpacking trips. A million things go through my mind as I try to formulate an easy answer. Fortunately, trail guide Andrew Skurka has a simpler response. Writing on Outside.com, Skurka shares seven tips for planning a successful backpacking trip, starting with asking yourself a basic question: Why hiking instead of car camping? Then he gets you thinking about where you want to go, who you want to go with, which gear youll need on the trail, what food to bring, etc. He weaves in safety touches good for backpackers at all levels. Its a nice little read to help anyone get started and help me whittle down my million thoughts.

Shortly before the pandemic hit the U.S., I took a long train ride from L.A. to Seattle on the Coast Starlight. After leaving downtown, the train swept out to the coast toward Santa Barbara, where I imagined the oceans waves were in sync with the rocking train. About 20 hours later, I peered out the window at a thick forest of snowy trees as the train chugged into the Cascade Range, peak after peak whizzing by. Amtrak describes the route as 1,377 miles of sheer magnificence. I agree; it felt like a grand outdoors sampler. Private roomettes (good for social distancing) for two passengers on the Coast Starlight are on sale until Friday. One way tickets cost $432, or $216 each, which includes meals. Here are the details about how to book Amtraks fare sale.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park was among the most visited national parks in 2019.

(National Park Service)

National parks racked up 327.5 million visitors in 2019, a 2.9% increase over the previous year. Whered we all go? Mostly to the 10 most visited parks in the U.S.

Among other National Park System sites, the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in the Bay Area remained the most visited ahead of the Blue Ridge Parkway, which runs through North Carolina and Virginia.

Among the least visited (where you may escape big crowds) are Pinnacles National Park in Central California (177,224 visitors) and Great Basin National Park in eastern Nevada (131,802 visitors).

What do you think? Keep the comments coming. Share anything thats on your mind. The Wild is written for you and delivered to your inbox for free. Drop us a line at TheWild@latimes.com.

Click here to view the web version of this newsletter and share with others. Im Mary Forgione and I write The Wild. Ive been exploring trails and open spaces in Southern California for four decades.

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How to best see the Comet NEOWISE right now - Los Angeles Times

ST. LOUIS You dont have to be an early bird to catch a view of a once-in-a-lifetime comet. Stargazers in the northern hemisphere can now see the comet known as NEOWISE just after sunset.

Its really almost 20 years now since weve had a good, visible comet for us to look forward to. But that drought has really come to an end this year. NEOWISE is putting on a great show, said Will Snyder, the manager of the James. S. McDonnell Planetarium at the St. Louis Science Center.

Snyder is referring to Comet Hale-Boppin 1997. Why so few? Most comets dont survive their closest approach to the sun.

When were looking at a comet, you know, you think of it as that cosmic, dirty ice ball in the solar system. And, sometimes, it gets too close to the sun. It doesnt survive. It breaks up, Snyder said.

But NEOWISE survived and is now passing near Earth. Look northwest, right under the Big Dipper, about 45 minutes after sunset. While not needed, binoculars or a telescopewill offer a better view. This is the best time of the month to see the comet because we are approaching the new moon, meaning there is very little moonlight.

You do want to, obviously, give yourself the darkest sky possible, Snyder said. And when we dont have something like the moon shining back at us that definitely helps. But anytime you can get away from city lights or, even if you cant travel, just turning off lights that you might have around your property.

Comet NEOWISE isnt the only celestial body you can see just after sunset. Swing yourself to the east and youll see the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

Theyre rising pretty much right after sunset right now in the eastern sky. So, almost 180 degrees from where you are looking for the comet. So, no matter where you look, you may see something cool.

Add to that, St. Louis is back in the path of the International Space Station and there will be several chances to see it pass by over the next several days.

And dont worry early risers; you can still catch a great showing by the planet Venus in the eastern sky before sunrise.

NEOWISE will make its closest approach to earth on July 22; after that, it will gradually fade. It wont be back for 6,800 years. Read more information from NASA here.

Track the International Space Station: spotthestation.nasa.gov/sightings

Excerpt from:

Now visible in the evening, dark skies enhance chance to see Comet NEOWISE - KTVI Fox 2 St. Louis

The United Arab Emirates Hope spacecraft has begun its journey to Mars. Well join a virtual launch party attended by mission leaders, NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, National Air and Space Museum director Ellen Stofan and others. Comet NEOWISE is still putting on a show! Learn more about it from NEOWISE principal investigator Amy Mainzer, NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson and JPL scientist Emily Kramer. Our own Casey Dreier provides an overview of three far-sighted white papers submitted as part of the new planetary science decadal survey.

Karl Schwarzschild solved the Einstein field equations for the geometry of empty space-time around a non-rotating, uncharged, axially-symmetric black hole with a quasi-spherical event horizon. Who first solved those equations with all those conditions except for a rotating black hole? (Phew.)

The winner will be revealed next week.

The Bond albedo is named after astronomer George Bond, who did not have a license to kill.

Mat Kaplan: This is Planetary Radio.

Speaker 2: [Foreign language 01:10:02]

Mat Kaplan: With that lift off from Japan, a new Hope began its journey to Mars. Welcome. I'm Mat Kaplan of the Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond. What a week it was for space fans. We'll celebrate the successful launch of the United Arab Emirates Mission to the red planet with members of the Hope Team, NASA administrator, Bridenstine, George Whitesides of Virgin Galactic, Ellen Stofan of the National Air and Space Museum and others.

Mat Kaplan: Then we'll hear from leaders of the mission that discovered Comet NEOWISE, including NEOWISE principal investigator, Amy Mainzer, and NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson. Casey Dreier also had a big week. The Planetary Society's senior space policy advisor submitted three inspiring papers to the National Academy's, Planetary Science Decadal Survey. Casey will be here to tell us about them. We've got Bruce Bettes waiting for us with even more about how to see that comet and the other wonders lingering above us.

Mat Kaplan: Here are just two headlines from the July 17 edition of the downlink, brought to you each week by the Planetary Society. Remember that dark green substance on the moon's far side that was inaccurately described as gel-like? It turns out it's probably just glassy rock. But this find by China's U22 Rover is still intriguing. Apollo astronauts found the same sort of deposit on the near side. It might've been formed in the heat of a volcanic eruption or a meteor impact. By the way, by the time you hear this, it's possible that China's ambitious Mars Mission, Tianwen-1, may be on its way to Fourth Rock.

Mat Kaplan: Speaking of the moon and Mars, NASA has just relaxed planetary protection requirements for both bodies. The agency feared the old standards might've prevented eventual human exploration of the red planet. You can read more at planetary.org/downlink, where you'll also enjoy a beautiful image of Jupiter's moon, Europa, captured years ago by Voyager 2. It was Sunday afternoon, July 19th here on the California coast. I excused myself from my wife's socially distant birthday celebration so that I could join a different sort of party.

Mat Kaplan: The online event began about an hour before that launch of an H2 rocket from the coast of Japan. His Excellency, Yousef Al Otaiba, United Arab Emirates ambassador to the United States, opened the webcast.

His Excellency, Yousef Al Otaiba: Good afternoon from Washington. For those of you in the U.S., thank you for joining us on a Sunday afternoon, and thanks to all our friends watching from the UAE and around the world at this very late hour. Today, if all goes well, the UAE become the first Arab country to launch and interplanetary spacecraft. This day has been years in the making. Many of you are likely familiar with President John F. Kennedy's Moon Shot Speech. That speech inspired the American people to invest in space and space exploration, and ultimately land the first humans on the moon.

His Excellency, Yousef Al Otaiba: In 2014, we announced our own Moon Shot Initiative. Our leadership challenged Emirati scientists and engineers to build a space probe and launch it into orbit around Mars in time for our 50th anniversary. It makes me so proud to see friends and colleagues gathered here today, six years later, to watch that dream become reality.

Mat Kaplan: Also awaiting the launch of Hope was NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstein. Here's some of what he had to say.

Jim Bridenstine: Long before I was the NASA administrator even when I was in the House of Representatives, and you guys came to me and you said, Hey, look, we have this big ambition. We just started a new space agency as the United Arab Emirates and we're in fact going to go to Mars. And I remember thinking, Wow, that's a stretch. And you gave me the timeline and I remember thinking that this is going to be a very, very difficult challenge. I don't know that at the time I fully believed that we would be in this moment right now.

Jim Bridenstine: I just want to say, to start, congratulations. It has been, I know, not always easy. There's always challenges, this is space white. But what an amazing job the United Arab Emirates has done putting together this mission and getting to this point. We've already seen the United Arab Emirates launch its own domestically produced satellite that is providing remote sensing and imagery on the earth to understand our changing environment, KhalifaSat, which of course has been a great contributor to our understanding of our own planet.

Jim Bridenstine: You've already had your first astronaut on the international space station. You've got plans for more astronauts on the international space station. The United States of America is very, very excited about having another partner in human space flight. And, of course, our big project is to go to the moon. The United Arab Emirates of course has its own lunar mission that it's launching in 2022, which is going to be amazing. I think this is a great moment, not just for the United Arab Emirates but for the United States of America and, in fact, for all of the international partners that are involved in exploring space and sharing information.

Jim Bridenstine: All of us can do more when we work together. The United Arab Emirates is a shining example of what can be done when we do in fact work together, so we're grateful for the partnership. We look forward to the launch. Space is one of those areas that unites people. In the House of Representatives and then the Senate and the American politics, no surprise here, there are some times divisions. But when it comes to space exploration, it unites people. Republicans and Democrats alike come together and say, We need to explore space. We need to get the science and the data. They say, We need to make discoveries and we need to explore.

Jim Bridenstine: And it doesn't just bring together parties within the United States, it brings together nations of the world in a very unique way. I really believe space is an amazing tool of diplomacy. The relationship between Russia and the United States, it's not a secret that it is very strained here terrestrially. But here in November, just a few months, we're going to celebrate 20 years of living and working together in space on the international space station. That's an amazing accomplishment.

Jim Bridenstine: That goes back to 1975. 1975, the Apollo-Soyuz project, where we had Russians and Americans working together in space for the first time, then the Shuttle-Mir project, and now the International Space Station project. Look, when it comes to exploration and discovery, it transcends boundaries and it enables people to work together in ways that oftentimes is not easy. It keeps open a channel of communication, so I really do believe it is an amazing tool of diplomacy for all nations.

Mat Kaplan: The administrator of Bridenstein was followed by Mike Gold, acting associate administrator for International and Interagency Relations at NASA.

Mike Gold: Let me apologize in advance, this is where I offend all of the engineers. While the technical challenges that we face are certainly important, I believe that the policy, the legal frameworks, are of equal importance to the technology. While I'm extremely excited about the Hope launch, and again congratulations on everything that you and the team have done, one of the launches that I was most excited about was the launch of the United Arab Emirates into the United Nations committee on the peaceful uses of outer space.

Mike Gold: You sit next to us due to alphabetical order. The UAE and the United States are literally next to each other, which is only appropriate given that we are so close together on policy. New space agencies like yours, the emerging space agencies, it's so important that we come together with the traditional space agencies to create a safe, peaceful, and prosperous world for all of us. By tackling those policy issues, that's how we do so. UAE has been an incredible partner, not only to us but the entire world.

Mike Gold: It's what we're trying to accomplish with the Artemis Accords, looking at transparency, safety, interoperability, the public release of scientific data. It's all so important, and UAE has been a tremendous partner already there. We look forward to continuing that policy leadership together into the future. Your daughter, my son and children from all throughout the world will one day be standing on Mars together to create that peaceful and prosperous future for all of us.

Mat Kaplan: Mike Gold of NASA. Remember, this was all before the successful launch so you can understand the apprehension in the voice of Sarah Al Amiri. Sarah chairs the United Arab Emirates council of scientists and is minister of state for advanced sciences. But she's also a science lead for what is formerly known as the EMM, the Emirates Mars Mission. On August 1st, she will become president of the UAE Space Agency.

Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri: A collection of mixed feelings from being terrified, to being excited, to apprehensive, to I just can't explain the multitude of emotions at the moment, especially reflecting on the large chunk that this has taken from our lives. Everyone that has been on the mission, including our partners, this has been our every living breathing moment. It has been part of our household, part of our families, part of our workplaces constantly. You get to a point in the mission where there's no such thing as day and night and work days and work weeks and so on.

Sarah bint Yousif Al Amiri: I think it's interesting in retrospect to see if this is going to create a void after launch, especially when the spacecraft is on here and its honest journey. Let's see what the journey has in store for us.

Mat Kaplan: The webinar was ably moderated by Talal Al Kaissi of the UAE Space Agency. I first met Talal when he was assigned to the UAE embassy in Washington. We were closing in on the launch when Talal introduced two more of the EMM Hope Mission team members.

Talal Al Kaissi: I'd like to now turn to two young engineers who actually worked on the project and have spent quite some time in Colorado with our knowledge partners, in the University of Colorado in Boulder. Both Heyam Al Blooshi, who is actually in Japan right now as you can see she's sideways on the screen and she's wearing the Emirates Mars Miss... There you go. Hoor Al Mazmi who's here with us in Abu Dhabi. Can you tell us a little bit about your experiences on the project? Maybe starting with you Heyam.

Heyam Al Blooshi: Hey, greetings everyone. My name is Heyam Al Blooshi I am an assembling technician and testing engineer at the UAE Space Agency, and I had the pleasure to work on the Emirates Mars probe and it was my first ever space mission. I feel that could touch on the point that space is a collaborative work, the collaboration between the UAE Space Agency the United Arab Emirates is what I mean, and the United States and also Japan, really enabled this mission to happen.

Heyam Al Blooshi: Knowledge transfer that I got from this mission is just amazing, building blocks for economic diversification, which is the main objective here. Thank you so much. I'm very excited for the launch.

Hoor Al Mazmi: My name is Hoor Al Mazmi. I'm a space science engineer at the UAE Space Agency and I'm part of the Emirates first mission science team. I worked on the science closure of the mission part of the science closure. I also got to work in Colorado. I got to do my master's while working, so I got to experience American culture again after my undergrad experience. That was nice and it was a great way for me to connect with scientists from all over the world through this experience. I wouldn't have been able to do this without the Emirates Mars Mission.

Talal Al Kaissi: I'd like to now turn into a very good friend of the UAE, Mr. George Whitesides, who was the CEO of Virgin Galactic until a few days ago when he now has the coolest name or coolest title in the space industry, the Chief Space Officer of Virgin Galactic to share his experience in dealing with the UAE through the partnership Virgin Galactic and [inaudible 00:12:44] investment company have. George.

George Whitesides: Hey Talal, and thank you for having us with you and everyone in the UAE space effort. It's such a great honor to be with you all and such an exciting moment. Yeah, so our relationship with UAE has been going on for now over a decade when we started a partnership around Virgin Galactic and its aspirations. It's just been such an incredible pleasure and, honestly, a joy to watch the growth of the UAE space sector as you pursue a very rational and logical series of steps to increase capacity within the country and to do real things as the administrator.

George Whitesides: Mike Gold said you really do a very well-planned agenda of real space activity. Our relationship on the Virgin Galactic side relates to potential growth of our business someday to the UAE. There has been a space port, or a potential space port, location identified in the UAE which has all the right parameters for a potential operation as well as now the new space legal framework that the UAE has created which enables those activities. And so that's what I mean about putting the blocks in place to really pursue a quite diverse range of activities from science as today to human space flight and educational capacity building.

George Whitesides: It's just been a joy to watch the growth, and to be a small part of that story has been terrific and we're grateful to you Talal for the role you play as a diplomat within the space community to connect us all to the different things that UAE is working on.

Mat Kaplan: I'll close our coverage of the beginning of the EMM Hope Mission with a historical perspective from an old friend of Planetary Radio. Ellen Stofan leads the National Air and Space Museum in Washington. The planetary scientist is also a former chief scientist for NASA.

Ellen Stofan: For me, the ambassador touched on it in the beginning, this whole program, and I've known Talal for now quite a number of years, and really watched this probe come to life. It reminds me of another country 50 some years ago now that in eight and a half years made it from basically no space agency at all to sending people to the moon. That spirit of Apollo is what I have really watched happening in the UAE. They will get the same results that we got from Apollo, inspiring a generation to go out and do the impossible.

Ellen Stofan: When you consider the people, like Jeff Bezos for example, who were inspired by Apollo that's what's going to be happening in the UAE. Every school child is going to be watching Hope and saying, I want to be that first person to step on Mars.

Mat Kaplan: As you heard, if all goes well, Hope will be inserted into its orbit above Mars in February of 2021. The same month we'll see the arrival of China's Tianwen-1 and the Perseverance Rover from NASA. What? You still haven't seen Comet NEOWISE? Apologies to our many Southern hemisphere listeners who don't have this surprising visitor in the sky. As you'll hear, when we talk with Bruce, I was finally able to see the comet a few days ago. It's called NEO wise because it was discovered by that mission. That mission is led by principal investigator Amy Mainzer.

Mat Kaplan: Amy has moved from the jet propulsion lab to the University of Arizona, where she is a professor in the school's lunar and planetary laboratory. Here are excerpts from her participation in a NASA teleconference just days ago.

Amy Mainzer: This object was spotted in late March. On March 27th, we saw a series of images of it, and it was immediately obvious that it was pretty likely that this would be a comet based on the extended emission, sort of fuzz, that we saw surrounding the point like nucleus of the comet as it moved across the sky against the background stars. But when we first discover these objects, we know so very little about them. We just see that there's something moving.

Amy Mainzer: In this case, we were able to call some friends who were able to contribute follow-up observations of the comment and determined that it orbit would actually take it fairly close to the sun. Which immediately becomes pretty exciting for us because when something that's been frozen in deep space for a really long time gets close to the sun a lot of exciting things can happen.

Mat Kaplan: Amy Mainzer was joined in the telecom by her NEOWISE mission colleague, Emily Kramer. Emily is a co-investigator based at NASA JPL.

Emily Kramer: The comet is about three miles or five kilometers in diameter, which is reasonably large but roughly average-sized comet. We're getting these spectacular images showing the comet's broad dust tail and ion trail in some cases as well. You should be able to see those comets for another few weeks or so, depending on how bright it stays. Comets are notoriously difficult to predict what's going to happen to them. We're all quite excited to see how this comet progresses.

Emily Kramer: Because Comet NEOWISE is so bright, we're able to see it a lot more clearly than we do for many other comets. We're able to see it with a lot of different telescopes in different areas, and we're able to use different kinds of observations. We're able to spectroscopy as well as what we call photometry, which is measuring how bright an object is. We're also able to look at what we call it's morphology, which means the shape. Comet tails tend to have a different shape as they move around away from the sun, so by studying this nice bright tail we'll be able to get a better idea of what's going on in the comments tail and understand the physics of comets.

Amy Mainzer: I would add onto that too. That one of the reasons we study comets like this one, and why this one is so appreciated because it is so bright, is that we really would like to know a lot more about their composition as well as their internal structure and how crumbly they are. We care about this because in the unlikely, extremely unlikely, event that we would find a comet that is headed our way we would like to know something about its structure and composition so we have a better idea of how to push it out of the way.

Amy Mainzer: One of the things we're interested in learning is how crumbly or how strong the comet is on the inside. Is it fragmented on the inside? Does it break apart more easily when it gets heated up? One of the things we'll be studying as we look at the dust signature from the object is the sizes of the particles that are coming off of its surface and can we use that to understand the total mass of the object as well as how fast it's moving that mass by crumbling apart as it's being heated.

Mat Kaplan: A few of us got to ask questions during the Comet NEOWISE telecom. I asked Emily Kramer if the up close and personal observations of Comet 67P by the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft have affected what we look for from a distance as other comets pass by.

Emily Kramer: It totally has reshaped our understanding of comments when we look at them from a distance. One of the really fascinating things that we discovered from the Rosetta Mission is that many comets have what we be call micro outburst, where they just let off a little bit of extra puffs of activity every now and then. When we're observing from the ground, we might miss these if we're not looking closely for them as most of the time the comets they were fairly [inaudible 00:20:08]. They don't do anything particularly interesting. They get brighter, or they get dimmer.

Emily Kramer: Sometimes they let off a bit of a puff of extra terabit of extra activity. But Rosetta has showed us that these smaller puffs happens pretty frequently, and so we're now able to see that. We're tracking these objects more closely and we're seeing a wider variety of activities than we had seen before.

Mat Kaplan: Also in the telecom was another old friend of our show. Lindley Johnson has led NASA's planetary defense office for years, and has the great title of Planetary Defense Officer. I asked Lindley about the status of plan for a dedicated space-based infrared telescope that will search for and characterize near-earth objects, those asteroids and comets that might threaten our planet.

Lindley Johnson: Thanks for the question, Mat. We do have funding now in our planetary defense program budget for a startup of a new space-based infrared telescope, a mission that we were calling the Near-Earth Object Surveillance Mission. We have funding this year that Congress designated for a startup work on the instrument development of about 35 million. There is a funding in fiscal year 21 as well, proposed for 21. Of course, the budget for 21 is still with Congress for appropriations, so we are hoping that their negotiations turn out well and we'll continue to have the funding available.

Mat Kaplan: I closed out my questions for all three of the telecom guests by asking if they had seen Comet NEOWISE with their own eyes.

Amy Mainzer: Yes. It's actually been a really big treat. I actually just went and looked at it a couple of nights ago and it was very low on the horizon, but I spotted it without binoculars. I was able to see it. It's really cool. I have to admit it's really, really fun to see something that we see in as space telescope and it looks like fuzzy dots when we first see it, of course. But there's really nothing quite like being able to see it with your own eyes and know that there really is something there and you know it's very tangible. That's pretty exciting. Plus, it's just beautiful. It's really fun to look at something like that.

Emily Kramer: I've gotten to go see it a couple times in the morning when it was just [inaudible 00:22:31] week. The first one was just from right near Pasadena. We had a fantastic view of it rising up over the mountains. It gave me chills to see that, knowing that our space telescope discovered that and that there's this object in space that we helped to find. That was really very exciting.

Lindley Johnson: I'm waiting for the cloudy skies down here in Florida to clear. In the evening, the last couple of evenings, we've had a big cloud bake of thunder storms in that part of the sky. I have my fingers crossed that here in the next week we'll have clear skies and I'll be able to see it off my front deck here in Florida.

Mat Kaplan: NASA's Lindley Johnson joined by NEOWISE principal investigator, Amy Mainzer, and NEOWISE co-investigator Emily Kramer for a conversation about Comet NEOWISE. A brief break and then I'll return with Casey Dreier.

Bill Nye: Where did we come from? Are we alone in the cosmos? These are the questions at the core of our existence. The secrets of the universe are out there waiting to be discovered. But to find them we have to go into space. We have to explore. This endeavor unites us. Space exploration truly brings out the best in us, encouraging people from all walks of life to work together to achieve a common goal, to know the cosmos and our place within it. This is why the Planetary Society exists.

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Mat Kaplan: Did you hear Alan Stern's latest Planetary Radio appearance a couple of weeks ago? Then you may remember Alan's mentioned of a paper he was working on. The deadline for submitting that paper was Wednesday, July 15th. My colleague Casey Dreier was working toward the same drop dead. As you know, Casey is our senior space policy advisor and chief advocate at the Planetary Society. He also joins me to co-host our monthly space policy edition episodes. I was pretty sure when I read them that you'd also find these papers fascinating, so I invited Casey to join us for an overview.

Mat Kaplan: Casey, welcome back to the show. This is great timing for us to talk about this because we're all about what a huge week last week was. It was a big week for you too counting three papers that needed to be submitted. First of all, remind us of what the decadal survey process is all about and why you were a part of it.

Casey Dreier: The decadal survey is kind of a short hand for this, once every 10 years, right? Decadal, 10 years process that NASA requests from the National Academy Of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, this independent body in the United States whose job it is to give scientific advice to government. The decadal survey's process is done for every one of NASA's four major science divisions, planetary science, astrophysics, planetary science, and heliophysics. The planetary science decadal survey then, that just formally began in March, has the goal of delivering a final paper by the end of 2021 or early 2022, so it's a long process.

Casey Dreier: The one that we're in now was a very important report that was provided back in 2011, and it basically sets the priority of the entire field. It's meant to be a consensus document. You know it's never perfect but the idea is that the scientific community says in the next 10 years these are the biggest science questions that we could pursue in planetary science and then these are the missions that can help us answer those questions. It helps NASA, it helps the Congress, and helps it advocacy organizations like the Planetary Society and others to all get on the same page.

Casey Dreier: Someone really nicely referred to this to as the sword and shield of planetary science, sort of in the sense that we can use it to rally behind and advance and get new missions. The Europa clipper mission was a good example of this in the last decadal survey. And shield in that we can rally in defense in case budget cuts happen to say these are the most important priorities, these have to happen in the next decade to advance the science. It's a very impactful and very widely respected process and report.

Casey Dreier: It's technically nonbinding, so NASA doesn't have to follow the recommendations. But again, the heft and the weight and the value that everyone places upon it, that is what gives it the inherent respectability and influence that it has.

Mat Kaplan: My understanding is that a lot of submissions, as part of the decadal survey process, promote specific planetary science missions. In fact, we recently heard about one of these, an argument for a Pluto orbiter that came from Alan Stern and a team he put together just a couple of weeks ago. These three papers that we're going to talk about, you really are doing something very different with these it seems.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. As part of the decadal process, one aspect of it is to take community input, and they do this in the form of these formal paper submissions. And so we just had a deadline in July for science-focused papers to promote various individuals priority sciences and say, Make this argument, why is this science really important for the next 10 years? They also have papers for specific missions to achieve those science goals and then also broader state of the field input, just kind of general ideas.

Casey Dreier: The idea is that the committee that writes this final report for the next decadal survey reads through all of these and tries to represent or get a good sampling of what the community is feeling about these things. For the Planetary Society, we're a pro science organization but we're not a scientific organization. Right? I think Bruce is the only person among us who has a PhD in science. Emily has her master's in planetary science. But the organization itself wants to support the scientific community.

Casey Dreier: Our position that we submitted to the decadal survey, we submitted two official papers on behalf of the society signed by the board of directors. It stepped back a little bit from individual missions and tried to make a case about large themes, things that can help set that organizing principle for how do you prioritize from all of these incredible things we can do exploring the solar system? What ways can you try to prioritize these options to maximally return on excitement, potentially revolutionary science, to the basic survival of the human species?

Casey Dreier: That's what the society wanted to contribute with some of the submitting these ideas and thoughts and language to help these committees put together and ultimately, hopefully, influence the final outcome of the report to prioritize these aspects of space exploration that the society and its members really value.

Mat Kaplan: Well, let's tackle the first of these papers and themes that you took on, The Search for Life as a Guidepost to Scientific Revolution, which you're lead author of along with our CEO Bill Nye. And significantly this is co-signed, as is the next paper, by the society's entire board of directors. You point way back to the beginnings of the scientific revolution and say that it largely began with the application of physics beyond earth and that that's been followed by the application of chemistry and geology. Am I right in saying that basically you're saying it's now time for biology to take this leap?

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at the trend, which past results don't guarantee future returns, but if you look at the trend all of science is this realization that Carl Sagan called them the great demotions of humanity, right? Where we used to think we were the big shot, the whole universe revolved around us. Then we realized, Nope, no, we're actually just revolving around the sun. And, oh, well, the sun's not revolving around the center of the Milky Way and, oh, there's no center to the universe and so forth.

Casey Dreier: The idea of this kind of extending this trend, and this is a formulation I always enjoyed from Kevin Hand who you've had on the show, is formulation that we've learned in the course of the scientific history that what we defined on earth, what we discovered around us was actually laws that were universal, so physics and motions of things in the sky, the discovery of chemistry. Right? The fact that there are chemical molecules is floating around in space that through spectroscopy we can discover and see how those form and what they're doing out there.

Casey Dreier: Then further the discovery of geology, right? The motions of things on terrestrial planets or the alterations that happen to them when exposed to the surface was confirmed by sending planetary probes throughout the mid 20th century. And so if you take that trend line, well, everything else seems to apply out there in addition to here on earth and that big remaining question, the one science that we only have this data point of one for, is biology. Everything we've learned about the universe suggests that there's nothing special in terms of why biology exists on the earth and so there's a good chance that it's somewhere else out there.

Casey Dreier: That is functionally what we're arguing in this paper amounts to a scientific revolution waiting to happen. Everything we understand about biology, we're limited to the types of chemistry and structures and processes and metabolisms that exist from this one common descendant from an ancient, ancient ancestor here on earth. Now, is that a common form of these convergent factors in terms of evolution? Or if we discover living life somewhere else in the solar system, close enough in the sense that we could analyze it and understand it, would that give us fundamental insights into new ways to approach biology and we gain this out?

Casey Dreier: The maximal beneficial potential for this would be, oh, we understand biology and this opens up this whole new way of making medicines and applied biology. It can really fundamentally reduce human suffering, maybe. Maybe there's nothing out there. Or maybe there's something out there but it's not very interesting ultimately. Either way the total outcome, the total potential value, is so huge weighted towards that maximum potential that even the low likelihood of that incredible benefit should compel us to pursue that incredible benefit if it's there.

Casey Dreier: We should give ourselves the chance to discover this, all things being equal. That's the core of this paper. It's that the search for life, and unlike a lot of other areas of science in which scientific revolution happens unexpectedly through some fundamental breakthrough or new theory, the search for life is a guidepost. It tells us how to do it. Nothing fundamentally new has to happen for us to seriously look for life in our solar system and in solar systems beyond. Actually that's where the guideposts that's saying, Here, go this way.

Casey Dreier: If it's there, there could be something fundamentally revolutionary to our understanding of the cosmos and here's how to do it. Very few opportunities in science give us that.

Mat Kaplan: I like this line of sort of the central line that you have here, the search for life should be the unifying goal in the coming to KETO survey. You point to previous so-called discontinuities in scientific development, these big jumps. I mean, if you're looking at steady progress of science, suddenly there is this discontinuity, and you point toward the potential for this to happen in exobiology. It seems to be what you're talking about here. Do I have this right?

Casey Dreier: Yeah, that's absolutely true. I mean, because again we have this data point of one, right? The N equals 1 problem in terms of how we formulate our understanding of the laws of biology. We don't have a huge range to use that. What are we missing beyond the fact that maybe there's this weird quirks of biology that happened that are conditional to earth? If we double that, that N equals 2, you suddenly have a huge amount of new information and that's that discontinuity. We made this obviously very simplified graph, but just a way to think about it, where you have this kind of process of day in and day out science on these various fields.

Casey Dreier: We've been fortunate in humanity in the last few 100 years to have relatively steady growth of knowledge about the world around us, the natural world, through the application of science. Occasionally, yeah, when you find something like if you found life that wouldn't be this gradual accumulation of new knowledge. It would be a jump and that's where the discontinuity happens. It's like a step function in our scientific understanding of biology in the cosmos. That's really only possible through the pursuit of planetary science.

Casey Dreier: Because in order to fully get the value from that, to fully get the amount of knowledge from that, you have to be able to effectively eventually bring it back to earth or near-earth to study. You can do in-situ stuff, but ultimately you have to have very good sample return and very detailed studies of it, which is impossible with exoplanets and things that are just beyond earth because we just can't get to them. And so we have these habitable environments that we know of, right? They're just begging us to explore them with Europa and Enceladus and the ancient aspects of Mars and sub-surface of Mars. We might as well look.

Casey Dreier: That's where we say, for the decadal committee, not only we believe we're compelled to pursue this based on that potential however unlikely outcome of just massive societal benefit or just massive increases in knowledge, but it's a very useful way to organize the exploratory structure. Because the search for life is just so cross-cutting. There are so many different aspects of science involved in it. There's just a very useful way to organize the whole program with this big pursuit that we also know resonates with people, people get it, it's very clearly communicated. It's ambitious.

Casey Dreier: They talk about this idea of life as a planetary phenomenon. You can't dissociate the context of biology from the natural context in which it came from. And so to understand life as a planetary phenomenon, you have to understand planet. It allows you to prioritize and figure out what aspects of planetary science, geology, atmospheric science, formation, motion. All the aspects of planetary science still fit in this. But it's just a nice way to think of the program from a holistic perspective as opposed to pursuing bits and pieces of different questions here and there.

Mat Kaplan: Ambitious. Yes, it sure is an ambitious goal. But are we talking exclusively about big, expensive flagship missions? Cassini's and Curiosities and Perseverance?

Casey Dreier: Well, we hope not to be. The other aspect of this paper is we know that for the most part every life-focused mission that we've done in planetary science has been a flagship mission. That's unsustainable. You can't really pursue that because flagship missions really, if we're lucky, we get two in a decadal period. Right? They're just expensive multibillion dollar missions. We have to find ways to increase detection, the number of opportunities I should say, for potential detection. That means doing modest, midsize, even discovery style, bio-signature detection.

Casey Dreier: The point that we make is if you can do more small missions, you don't have to have this full suite of exquisitely sensitive life detecting instrumentation. You can focus on one or two bio-signatures. If you show a promising bio-signature, then you get that big mission that focuses on the life question. But we have to have a way to increase the number of opportunities to detect life in our solar system and, again, in solar systems beyond. You do that just by lowering the cost. I mean, ideally you do that by increasing the budget, which we've been doing over the last few years, but they have to go hand in hand.

Mat Kaplan: We could continue this segment with just discussion of this one paper, but there are two more that we want to mention. Let me say now, and we'll probably repeat again, you can read two of these papers @planetary.org. In fact, we'll put the direct link on the show page for this week's episode @planetary.org/radio. We'll get to that where you can find the third paper in a moment. Let's move on to the second one, Increasing the Scope of Planetary Defense Activities, Programs, Strategies, and Relevance in a Post COVID-19 World.

Mat Kaplan: Again, you served as a lead author, Bill Nye authored it with you. It's co-signed again by the society's board of directors. Okay, what are the parallels between the comprehensive planetary defense program you argue for here and the lessons of the COVID-19 panels?

Casey Dreier: This is something we've been talking about for a while as not just a learning opportunity but an opportunity to connect what can be a very abstract idea, which is being hit by a giant space rock for lack of a better term.

Mat Kaplan: Yeah, it's not. The dinosaurs would say it's not that abstract. But, okay.

Casey Dreier: Yeah. Well, they wouldn't say much of anything would they now?

Mat Kaplan: Oh, given the chance.

Casey Dreier: But the idea is, so pandemics have similarities to the situation we find ourselves in with near-earth objects that are potentially hazardous but are unlikely in the scale of one's lifetime to happen. But just because something is unlikely doesn't mean that it's impossible. Right now, obviously with the Coronavirus raging across the world and particularly here in the United States, no one would have predicted this six months ago, or maybe just about six months ago or a year ago, let's say.

Mat Kaplan: Eight months ago.

Casey Dreier: Eight months ago. This was a low probability high impact event. You have to have some sort of planning for those because low probability again does not mean zero. The ultimate, I would say, high impact event would be getting hit by a near-earth object and having that devastating As we've gone through many times on this show and on our website, the consequences are very dire for being hit by a particular large near-earth object people right now, I would say going through a low probability high impact event, this is the time to start talking about other ones.

Casey Dreier: Because it's very relevant to say the value of preparation for those are incredibly high. I drew a parallel in this paper using some early reporting, what's coming out of China and some of the other South Pacific Asian nations that particularly dealt with the SARS virus back in the early 2000s, that they had much more vigorous and prepared systems to deal with viral outbreaks because of similar experiences 20 years ago. You can debate various aspects of those responses but, overall the spread in a lot of those countries have been a lot less than countries that didn't have outbreaks of SARS in the early 2000s.

Casey Dreier: There's an opportunity, I think, that tells you that countries that have had these experiences where there was low probability high impact events are more amenable to putting up investments for similar types of preparation. The public we claim is more open to preparing for these types of events after they experience one. We can start to draw, again, these parallels to near-earth objects which again I should say already have very high levels of support when just pulling the public. It's often put as the first or second most important activity NASA could already be doing.

Casey Dreier: I would argue now that those are probably higher in terms of people's expectations. People in the United States are feeling more likely that a natural disaster is going to happen to them, so there's more uncertainty around these issues. And so there's more, again, political, I would say, willingness to begin to invigorating this program of planetary defense within NASA. Now we're talking to a science community in this paper. A lot of this is not up to the scientific community, but what we wanted to do was try to give them ways in which to frame this question for how they begin to talk about it within NASA and for NASA itself out to members of Congress and the White House.

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A Mars Mission Begins, a Comet Exits, and the Future of Planetary Science - The Planetary Society