Sailing the cosmic ocean with a LightSail

This is the contact with a test one. Touchdown to club B. Go home. Hi everyone, welcome to A New Space Cowboys. Yeah. Here with Herbert. Are we still counting? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, all our listeners probably get annoyed by us losing count every time. Every time. We are just, I think we're just almost halfway in the year. That means that we, I don't know, we're close to 25, 26-ish. So that's great. And through the internet, on the other side of the planet, we have Matt Kaplan with us. Matt, how are you? I am great. It's wonderful to join you guys. Thanks for having me as a guest. Definitely, definitely. You are the host of Planetary Radio, a radio talk show about space exploration, produced by the Planetary Society, which makes you... Yeah. Either... Either a competitor or a colleague. I would rather consider you a colleague. Thank you. I prefer that too. I'm going for colleague as well. Exactly. And it's great to have like a cross-continental sort of like planetary... Colleague. Yeah. Bonanza going on right now. And we're going to chat about, well, a whole bunch of things. A lot of stuff has been happening in the US. We're supposed to have Joeri here. He regretfully left. He's going to get the cancel. So, Herbert, you're going to talk about China. China? Yes. Oh, okay. No. Is that? Yeah, yeah. So, we're going to talk about China. We're going to talk about the US. I want to talk about light sails. And especially light sail. The light sail. We're glad. I'm glad to hear that. Yeah. How are things in the US when it comes to space, Matt? Well, you know, generally, if you look over the long term, take the long view, things are looking pretty good. Okay, great. It's... Am I hearing some skepticism? Some topics of last week come to mind. Yes, yes. And, in fact, that, the topic you are probably thinking about... That's right. A certain tweet from... A certain someone. The leader of our nation. That's absolutely right. Mm-hmm. Well, we just, as we speak, less than an hour ago, we released this week's episode of Planetary Radio. And it was only last Friday that we did our monthly... It was only the monthly space policy edition that I do with our chief advocate, Casey Dyer. And that show went up on the net at almost exactly the moment that the president issued his tweet about the moon and Mars. Wow. And so, of course, we couldn't address it. And we had a lot of listeners saying, oh, my God, they have to get to this. Well, we do in this week's show. And Casey, who's a very sharp guy, has some very interesting analysis. I don't know if you're ready to go into that, but some really interesting comments. But there's been a lot of backpedaling in NASA and elsewhere due to the president's comment. Yeah. Shall I read out the comment for just one sec? Sure. Go ahead. You mean the tweet itself? Yeah, the tweet itself. So, of course, America is going... So, first context, America is going to the moon in 2024-ish. That's the idea. But then... Emphasis on the ish. Ish, exactly. I was just about to say, I'm shutting up about this right now. No. Okay. And so on June 7th, which is just a few days ago, Donald Trump said, tweeted, For all the money that we are spending, NASA should not be talking about going to the moon. We did that 50 years ago. They should be focused on the much bigger things we are doing, including Mars, of which the moon is a part. Defense and science. There's a lot to unpack there. So let's start unpacking. First. He's basically saying NASA should not be talking about going to the moon, even though Jim Bridenstine is talking about going to the moon. So I feel like I sort of understand what Donald Trump is saying here. But, Matt, what do you think the president is saying here? Well, I agree entirely with my colleague, Casey. First of all, recognize that I don't know how it is over there. You may have much smarter media. But here... The popular media largely reported on the second part of that tweet, where the president more or less conflated talk about the moon and Mars, saying that the moon is a part of Mars. Generally, we'll give him that. Our assumption is that he was saying that going to the moon is a part of our program to go back to Mars, which continues to be a topic of great debate here. But I will tell you that... More and more, there seems to be acceptance that the moon should be the training ground for a journey to Mars, for all of the advantages that it offers, the primary one being that it's only three days away. So that... And you have to practice, right? You have to practice. I think it's probably... You have to do it on some celestial body, and it better be close. Yeah, much better than, oh, you know, finding out, you know, two months into your journey... Yeah. ...to Mars, which is going to take 10, and you can't turn around... Yeah. ...that you've got some serious problem with life support. That would be bad. Yeah. But we've, you know, we've proved with Apollo 13 that we can recover from near disaster on the moon, near the moon, and let's hope that, you know, we don't face anything like that ever again. Yeah. But that's just the second part of the tweet. Yeah. It's the first part of the tweet that really has generated a lot of consternation. And there is speculation, and you may have heard this, that the president, who we know watches a lot of television, and he watches very specific news outlets in this nation... Fox News. Right. And Fox News' sister channel, Fox Business. And apparently, a very popular host on the Fox Business channel had only a few minutes before the president's tweet said, Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this is the one that, you know, poor Jim Bridenstine, who, as you guys know, I had on my show a couple of weeks ago. Yeah. And, you know, we think pretty highly of him here. We think he's accomplishing a lot, although he's still very new in the job. Yeah. He's one of those who has been... He's been trying desperately to, you know, say that, oh, no, the president is just backing up what we intended to do all along. Oh, yeah. Is that what he was saying? Okay. Yeah. The moon is no more than a way station on the way to Mars. But, Matt, can I say this about this tweet? It's self-contradictory. I mean, the first part says we should not be talking about going to the moon. And the second part says the moon is part of the journey to Mars. So... I mean, how can it mean anything? It's so stupid. Why is everybody talking about this at all? Well, you know, at the Planetary Society, we stay out as much as possible of partisan politics. And we have an agenda. And anybody who's willing to further that agenda, we probably, you know, unless they commit crimes, we're probably going to... Oh, that's great. That's great. That's great. That's great. That's great. Which is what I love about the Planetary Society, by the way. That's why I became a member. It's one of those few topics where, you know, you can reach across the aisle and everybody sort of agrees. What you will do in space next, that is, I believe, that is a sort of a partisan issue or more like a philosophical issue, I would say. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes. But it's good that it's something that really unites people. And I actually, I really liked the fact that the Trump administration was so... Well, was actually really doing things again. Like there was a lot of new energy suddenly in the whole thing. If it's realistic, I don't know. But you were commenting about Bridenstine's attempts to iron out the... The fallout, sort of. The mess that his boss created. So how did this go on? How did it go wrong? No, on. How did it go on? You were talking about... Oh, sorry. I interrupted you. That's the idea. I interrupted you and I apologize. No, no. That's quite all right. There is, as you might expect, a great deal of skepticism. In fact, there were some scientists in front of a congressional committee just yesterday in Washington. And these scientists were expressing their concern, which we would very much share at the Planetary Society, that getting back to the moon, getting humans on the moon is going to be very expensive. Administrator Bridenstine has assured everyone several times that the money to accomplish that will not be taken from the science side of what NASA does. And they continue to say that. But there are leading scientists in space science in the United States who are expressing grave concern. And there are definitely members of Congress who share this concern. And, you know, if we started to see signs of this at the Planetary Society, this is something I'm sure we would jump right into because we have done so in the past. But I do want to mention... I'm not following this very much. Excuse me. What do you mean? The cost for going to the moon should not be taken from the science side, you said. Of what? Of NASA. That means manned space flight should not suck away dollars that should be spent on unmanned scientific missions. Is that right? Yes, that's exactly right. And it's difficult to see where these funds may come from. I mean, after all, Administrator Bridenstine said that the $1.6 billion in additional money that they have asked for in the first year of the so-called Artemis moon program, it's really $2 billion that's being put toward the program, but they found $400 million savings elsewhere with the Lunar Gateway. But that $1.6 billion, he calls a down payment. Everybody knows. He said, this is a bell curve. All projects like this are a bell curve. And we're at that tiny, you know, left side of the bell curve. Oh, Lord. And nobody knows yet. NASA is not saying how high that bell curve is going to rise in the coming years. So you're going to need truckloads more money. Is that right? It's certainly possible. Yes, lunar modules full of more money. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And nobody knows where the bell should come from then. I mean, the idea is, I believe, that maybe NASA, after 50 years of practice and having now a commercial spaceflight industry, would make it all a little easier, cheaper maybe than before. Is that a realistic, you know, outlook? Well, I certainly think that's the case. Okay. And NASA has said that it will, to every degree possible, it's going to use commercial services to get humans back to the moon this time, right up to, you know, the creation of the equivalent to the lunar module, that spacecraft that will take the humans down to the moon. And they did just award these contracts. The three companies to get small payloads to the moon. There were some surprises with that, the awards of those contracts. A couple of the companies some of us have never heard of. But we applaud this. We think they're moving in the right direction. But there's still going to be an awful lot of expense that NASA is going to have to be able to cover. They announced something else this week. People can buy a ticket to stay. They can buy a ticket to stay at the International Space Station. That's right. Would that be a nice way to cover the cost of a lunar mission? Or would that not make a dent in the bills? I have only heard this talked about as a way to offset the ongoing cost of supporting the International Space Station. The space station itself. Would that money, could it be diverted to Artemis? I really don't know. But I guess, you know, if they save the money, on the ISS, maybe they'd still be able to get some indirect benefit for going to the moon. But you're right. 52 million a shot. And there was just an announcement from Bigelow Aerospace that they're going to handle that. They're going to offer space to four people at a time, four tourists, to go up there on the ISS and sit in the cupola and look down at Earth. You've got a veritable hotel up there. Yeah. I mean, four people at a time. I think it comes with free use of the toilet, too. Great. Everybody wants to poop in space. I just want to backtrack a little bit. So the three companies that were announced, I just want to quickly Google them. Astrobotic Technology of Pittsburgh, Intuitive Machines of Houston and Orbit Beyond of Edison, New Jersey. So they are going to be the ones that are going to build lunar modules and small robotic landers and all those things. And those are companies that even people at the Planetary Society hadn't even heard of. Right. How do you say that? Well, one of them asked – Did you hear him say that? Astrobotics we had heard of. The other two apparently were operating sort of in stealth mode. Some of the big companies, Mast and Space Systems, Moon Express, who have been working on this for years. True. They were not part of this award. But they are – both of those companies I just mentioned, they are continuing on their own, and they're going to be looking for private customers. Yes, they are. So this is one that is pretty unique to the world. Yes, very unique. It's the first one. And that's why I think they want to build some more. That's right. They want to build some more. That's right. That's right. And they're going to be working with those companies. And they were not part of this award. But they are – both of those companies I just mentioned, they are continuing on their own. And they're going to be looking for private customers, commercial, corporate customers to do exactly what these other three plan to do. See, and this is the part I do find exciting. It's like about a year ago, I wasn't even thinking about things like this happening. I do like that there's this whole new energy or this whole – there's a plan. Maybe the plan will fail. Maybe the plan will be delayed or we'll see. But I do think there's some new excitement going around at least. Absolutely. Right? I agree. I agree. I do think that Streets on the Moon eventually will be named after companies. That's how it starts to feel. First, we'll have Trump Street, of course. Trump Street, Trump Square. Trump Square. Trump Square. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Well, I'm looking forward to driving down Bezos Boulevard. Hey, exactly. Bezos Boulevard. That's a nice one. Exactly. I think I actually – where is it? I think I just had the – let's see if I can quickly pull it up again. No. I had the quote from Fox Business that the president actually tweeted about. And I hadn't heard it. I haven't heard it yet actually. So the idea was that Trump sent out this. Weird tweet while looking at Fox – while watching Fox Business, right? So let's see. Soon after. Yes. Soon after. Very soon after. Yeah. So let me – so let's listen in. And the guy – Yeah, no worries. Okay. Yeah. Here we go. But I thought we would advance beyond that. And I thought either we'd target Mars or – why this – why now? So the moon, we did it 50 years ago. We're coming up on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. That's right. It was what we call Flagstaff. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We did it. We went. We did walk around. We collected samples. We came back. What we're doing now is enabling a sustainable presence on the lunar surface, which is what we need. We still need to drive that innovation and complete those technologies that will allow us to have a sustained presence on Mars. Don't forget, when we go to Mars, you're stuck there for 22 months because of the cycles, the orbit cycles of the Earth and Mars. And so when we go to Mars, it has to be sustainably. We have to prove on the moon that we can have a sustainable presence there first to make sure that it's a safe venture to do. But we will, in the 2030s, be going to Mars sustainably there as well. This is strange. This was Jeff DeWitt, NASA's chief financial officer, actually, talking about this. Chief financial officer. Sounds reasonable what he said. Sounds super reasonable. So why would the president suddenly go against his own people? Yeah, you know, I had not actually heard that bit from Fox. Me neither. I wonder if... I think the host of that show... Neil Cavuto, I believe. He... I don't know what he went on to say from there. And, you know, who knows? It's really speculation. Maybe President Trump came up with this entirely on his own. But the coincidence does seem to be striking. Yeah. Interesting. But somebody along the way mistook what was just said. Somebody somewhere. I think. Because what was just said sounds reasonable. Trump's tweet doesn't. So if what he tweeted... Was based on what we just heard, somebody along the way mixed it up. Yeah. Maybe the president himself wouldn't be the first thing he mixes up. Maybe we can summarize this all by just saying the Trump administration is always full of surprises. That's right. That is it. That is it. I think that's a fair statement. Exactly. Exactly. From the moment he got elected on. From the moment he got elected until now. Full of surprises. Hey, Matt, let's talk about the light sale. Please. Yes. The second light sale to go up, I believe in a Falcon Heavy, which is pretty epic. In a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. What can you tell us about it? When is it going up? What's the plan? What are you doing? The latest that we have heard is that it will not happen before June 24th. Okay. And everybody's hoping that that will actually be the day. But we don't have that official word. We don't have that official word yet. From either SpaceX, obviously the creator of the Falcon Heavy, or the Air Force. And this is primarily an Air Force mission. There is a secret Air Force payload, which is the main payload. And then there are all of us secondary payloads, the hangarons, who are catching a ride up into Earth orbit. And our light sale, too, is one of those. So, you know, we don't get to call the shots here. It's up to the Air Force and SpaceX. And it is… What is the light sale, for those who don't know? Light sale is a solar sail. And for those who are unfamiliar with that, who didn't catch them on Deep Space Nine or a whole bunch of other popular media, including the original novel, The Planet of the Apes, a light sale is pretty much what it sounds like. It sails on the light of the sun. Not the solar wind, which are the particles coming from the sun. The protons, primarily. But the actual photons, the light of the sun, which, even though they don't have mass, carry momentum. And they transfer that momentum to a big, shiny thing, like our light sail. And the great thing about a solar sail, or a light sail, is that it doesn't need to carry any fuel. Obviously, chemical rockets are terrific if you have to, you know, get something up to speed very quickly. But once… Once you run out of fuel for that chemical rocket, you're out of luck. You're coasting from then on. Whereas a solar sail, as long as it is within sight of the sun or some other source of intense light, say, very powerful laser beams, it can be powered. And that's why a lot of people feel that a light sail is the only practical means that anybody has come up with so far to enable interstellar flight, at least with… With existing technology. Now, we're not going to be going interstellar. We'll be very happy if we can put light sail up into medium Earth orbit, which is about 700 kilometers up, and unfurl its big sails, catch the light of the sun, and then use that light to raise the orbit of light sail. I have a couple of questions about that. I got a million. Oh, well. I'm first. Yeah, definitely. One thing, the light sail has to be moved all the time, right? It has to catch the sun's rays when it's going away from the sun to gain speed. And it has to move so that it does not catch any sun's rays when it's going toward the sun to prevent it from losing speed. Oh, yeah. You can break it that way. So you have to move it all the time. Where does the energy for this movement come from? We have a couple of questions. There are 12 ways of adjusting the attitude of the spacecraft. One, and this is for sort of minor adjustments, we have these great rods of metal, which basically are charged with electricity, and they are deflected, get this, by the Earth's magnetic field. And we're not the first to do this, but they work pretty well. It's almost like magic. But because that's not enough, that reorientation that has to be done twice each orbit, when you're headed into the sun, obviously you want to be edge-on to the sun. You can't eliminate the force of the light, but you can minimize it. There's an animation of this on the Planetary Society website, right? We sure do, and it's terrific. I hope everybody will go to planetary.org and check it out. And then, you know, when you get to where the sun can drive the sail, you've got to turn the sail 90 degrees back so that it catches. And, you know, just think of a sailboat. Sailing on the seas of Earth. It's the exact same thing. In fact, like a sailboat on Earth, we could even tack into the light of the sun, much as a sailboat is able to tack into the wind here on Earth. But the most basic function is what you've just described, turning it edge-on to the sun when we're headed toward the sun, and full across the sun when we're headed away from the sun, so we can pick up that extra velocity. I missed the part. Oh, I didn't say how we turn it. Yeah, the magnetic field. Well, the magnetic stuff, that's not good enough for making those quick turns twice every orbit. But you want to know about the mechanism. No, I don't know at all. Yes, yeah. Okay, well, and there is a mechanism. You know, a lot of spacecraft, a lot of satellites and other spacecraft have reaction wheels or momentum wheels. Most of them need three. We only needed one. And that momentum wheel is what will— we hope—make these turns, two turns every orbit. The 90-degree turn that we need to do to be able to raise the orbit and control light sail properly, basically speed it up. And it's really just a wheel. It's a gyroscope that turns inside a little housing inside the tiny light sail, which, by the way, is only, we like to say, the size of a loaf of bread. It's a three-unit CubeSat, by far the smallest attempt to— to launch a solar sail ever. That's all this probe is, just cubes. A loaf of bread. Yeah. Yeah. And how big is the sail? The sail is—oh, my God, I should know this by heart. I believe it's 10 meters across. I'm going to look it up right now. A loaf of bread with 10 meters of sail. Exactly. And that sail is pretty standard stuff. It's just shiny mylar material that's unrealed by these things that are kind of like tape measures working in reverse. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And— And so then it's pushed in orbit in this case. Is there any sort of way that you can sort of steer it out of orbit that eventually you can get it as far enough away from the Earth so that the propulsion of, you know, these photons is good enough to get it out of Earth's orbit even? Like over— This is out of the gravity well. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Out of— Yeah. In a long— How much force is on there? Like, how much force does light have? It's tiny. If you have— If you hold a piece of paper, just standard paper on your hand, that's about the force, the maximum force that is ever applied to light sail. Okay. So it ain't much. But it's something. But this question that you're asking about could we reach escape velocity and head off across the solar system, we get asked this all the time. The question is— The answer is, in principle, yeah, you could do this. But— But it's not something that we are predicting, you know, that we are requiring to show the success of the mission. In fact— Of course. All we're looking to do is to show that we can keep light sail stable and raise its orbit and show that we— it is possible to control—launch and control and fly a solar sail in this tiny format called a CubeSat. Now, you know, would it be extra cool to be able to keep raising it and raising it? Yeah. And until maybe, finally, we could take off for elsewhere? It sure would. But that is not something that we really are expecting or even talking about much. You know, let us get it up there and see if we can make it meet its basic requirements and then we'll talk about what else can be done. Okay. So you're putting it at an altitude of 700 kilometers, right? That's right. Yeah. So how much altitude do you want to gain using the light sail? And in how much time? I'm not really sure what the goal is. It's fairly small because it won't take a lot for us to demonstrate that it actually is effective. Even if you raise it a little bit, yeah. Yeah, even a little bit would prove that we are capable of accomplishing this and that somebody else maybe can run with this technology and do much more. You know, after all, we're just a little, you know, poor nonprofit organization. There are other organizations. There are other organizations out there that we hope will be excited by this technology and take advantage of it. In fact, I should mention, if you give me a second. Yeah, definitely. There are other spacecraft that have made use of solar sailing. The best example was a brilliant mission from the Japanese Space Agency called Icaros. And Icaros was just a terrific mission. It worked almost flawlessly, very advanced technologically. So hats off to the Japanese. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Bye. All right. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And it actually did achieve. Well, it got a boost first from a rocket, but it is sailing through interplanetary space. There are other missions like the messenger mission to Mercury and the current solar mission that is approaching closer to the sun than any has before. These missions have big heat shields, which essentially act as light sails. And they had to take the pressure of light from the sun into account to make sure that these spacecraft would go where we wanted them to go. So, in fact, solar sailing is something that's well proven. It's just that nobody's ever done it with a CubeSat and relied exclusively on solar sailing to raise the orbit of a spacecraft. Okay, so you're out to prove that you can have a spacecraft that uses just solar sailing. That'll be the first. Okay, but the Japanese actually are the first solar sailors. Yeah, strictly speaking, Icarus was in many ways the first successful solar sail. Okay, okay. And why is that? Because you've done this before as the Planetary Society. You did LightSail 1 as a sort of proof of concept as well. Why is the Planetary Society the right organization to do this? And who is actually doing it? I'm also really curious. Who's building this? This thing literally. We are working with a number of other companies and a university, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, to create LightSail. There have been a lot of people involved in this over the years. Your question about why we're part of this goes back to the founders of the Planetary Society almost 40 years ago. If you go on the website, planetary.org, you can find video of… Probably our best-known founder, Carl Sagan, going on the old Johnny Carson show, The Tonight Show, with a model, a primitive model of a solar sail that he actually showed to the host, Johnny Carson. And in some ways, it looks quite familiar. It looks a lot like our solar sail. I have it here. Here it comes. This is Carl Sagan. Carl Sagan speaking, people. … very crude model, and which travels on the radiation. And particles that come out of the sun, the wind from the sun. And it works exactly as an ordinary sailboat does. So it can go out from the sun. It can tack inwards to the sun. And because it has a constant acceleration, it can get you around the inner part of the solar system a lot faster and a lot more conveniently than the usual sorts of rocket propulsion. Now, what would this do? Well, it takes you to where you want to go. So one mission that's being talked about is to rendezvous with Halley's Comet. Wow. Wow. Wow. That didn't happen yet. But this – so he was – because he was one of the founders, he also was one of the first to popularize this idea maybe. It was a really great – He was. … a good thing for the Planetary Society to build on. Absolutely. And one of our other founders, Lou Friedman, who is our executive director emeritus, still very involved not just in the Planetary Society but across the board with cutting-edge space science and space engineering. Lou Friedman. Lou Friedman. Lou Friedman. Lou Friedman. And he actually wrote a book about solar sailing, which kind of became the engineering bible for everyone who wanted to develop these. And it was Lou who was leading that project at the Jet Propulsion Lab to try and build a gigantic solar sail to rendezvous with Halley's Comet, which eventually lost its funding, unfortunately. But Lou was also a driving force behind our efforts to do solar sailing. And, you know, even LightSail 1, which didn't go high enough to sail on the light of the sun. And we will never know if Cosmos 1 might have been successful because we didn't have much money. We had to go get it into orbit as cheaply as possible. And we went with an old Russian sea-launched or submarine-launched ICBM, and it went kaput. Oh. Oh. Oh. And so we never had a chance to find out if Cosmos 1 would be successful. And I'm very proud of the fact that we were able to recover from that and go on to LightSails 1 and 2. So how were those funded? Yeah. Yeah. Sorry. The question was how were they funded? The LightSails. These are – we are a nonprofit. We picked up an enormous amount of funding from our members, the members of the Planetary Society worldwide. So wait. I'm paying for this LightSail. Awesome. You are. Awesome. You pay for it. You're paying my salary too. So thank you very much. Good. I thought I was paying for the magazine. Yeah. The Planetary Report. Love it. That's true. Yeah. It is a great magazine. We just had a new one come out on Monday, by the way, the Spring Sostis issue. If you like, you can pay more. But yes, you're paying for it. We also had some terrific major donors, people who simply believed in the dream and wanted to be a part of this and wanted to put their money where their mouth was. Yeah. And enabled us to complete this project, which, you know, it costs a tiny fraction of what, oh, a typical NASA mission would cost. So how much money went in there? We're talking several million dollars, including the launch. Is Elon Musk chipping in by you being able to hitch a ride on the Falcon Heavy? Not to my knowledge, but that's more the Air Force and NASA's doing than Elon's. So they're helping. But I'm told he's happy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, I just discovered. I told you, I thought it was 10 meters, the sail width when it's fully deployed. No, it's 5.6 meters or a total of 32 square meters. Okay. So 5.6. I'm trying to imagine. That's about this studio. Yeah. A little bit bigger than the studio. the studio that we're in. Yeah, it's not bad. Pretty good sized studio. Yeah, definitely. Definitely. So this launch, is it a free ride that you're having? Yes. I mean, that's the terrific thing about this. It is because NASA has this program to put secondary payloads that qualify on these rockets that have some spare capacity. We're not alone. There are, I believe, more than 20 different payloads, some of them very interesting, like an atomic clock that JPL has developed that is far more accurate than any atomic clock that has ever gone into space before and is going to be the basis of, you know, navigation around the solar system someday. Really? That's cool. Yeah. How do you qualify for a free ride? Do you have to jump a lot of hoops? Oh, yes. As you might expect, there are... There are a lot of things you have to do to, you know, first prove that you have a worthy mission and then prove that you're capable of building a spacecraft which can actually make this happen. And, you know, we've got some great people working for us and with us, and we were able to pull that off. Congratulations. Thank you. Now, when LightSail 2 is up there, first it has to do some maneuvering, prove that it can raise its orbit. Apart from that, will it do anything else? I mean, when you've got a craft up there, what else can you do? Not too much, but we do have a couple of cameras on the spacecraft. Okay. And one of those cameras, we hope, will be able to catch some images of Earth. And the other thing that is really interesting that we're going to be able to do with this is that we have mounted some little retroreflexes. We have some little light vectors on LightSail 2, and that will be used to reflect back laser beams from Earth. And the advantage of that, it's not that those lasers will be powerful enough to help it go any faster, although maybe someday, as the Breakthrough Project is contemplating, maybe lasers will drive light sails out of our solar system. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is just to, you know, let us very accurately determine exactly what we're going to do with this. Exactly. And basically where and how far away LightSail is, which is going to be critical to us determining, have we raised the orbit through solar sailing? Because, as I said, we don't expect to raise it very much. I mean, maybe we'll be surprised and do even more. But this laser ranging is going to allow us to do that, and it's those retroreflectors, much like the retroreflector that was mounted on the Beresheet Israeli lander that is on the moon, but unfortunately, is probably in pieces. In pieces, yeah. Where is LightSail 1 now? What happened to LightSail 1? LightSail 1, we knew going into it, because LightSail 1 only went up into low Earth orbit, that there would be much too much atmospheric drag for it to solar sail. And what's more, once the sails were deployed, and there's a great picture of this on our website at planetary.org, of the deployed sail, once the sail was deployed, obviously the atmospheric resistance was going to go up. It was going to go way up. And so just as we expected, it was only a matter of days before LightSail fell back to Earth, burned up in the atmosphere, and that was the end of LightSail. That's why you're having a higher orbit this time. Exactly right. The whole idea is to get us above more of the atmosphere. There is still a little bit out there. There is still some atmospheric drag. But this time, we think we'll be just high enough that we can actually use the light. We can use the light of the sun to do a sail. So here's a question I hope to embarrass you with a bit. Have any astronomers complained yet? I know where that question is coming from. You've got this big mirror out there. Yeah, yeah. It is very true that with luck, you'll be able to see LightSail 2 when it catches the sun at the right angle. It ought to be a spectacular sight. But we're not putting up a thousand of these. No. 12,000. Yeah, you're referring back to Elon Musk's plan of putting internet in space and then also blocking everybody's view. The 60 satellites they launched. And he's not alone, of course. Other people are talking about major constellations. I mean, Jeff Bezos now is as well. But we're only doing one. So we haven't, as far as I know, we haven't had any grumbling astronomers. So you're having good relations with the astronomy community. I sure hope so. They're very important to us. Okay. Let me see. Yeah, Herbert, in the preparation of the show, you wanted to ask something about SETI at home. But I was wondering, the Planetary Society… It has nothing to do with LightSail. No, with SETI at home. Change the subject then. Okay. Because SETI at home was launched back in the 90s, I think. And I believe it's still running. So I wanted to know, how's it going? Any discoveries so far? It was a Planetary Society. Planetary Society project. Was that a Planetary Society project? Well, I'll tell you. Actually, this is an interesting story. Okay, great. Because it was not, strictly speaking, a Planetary Society project. But it was because of the Planetary Society that the folks at UC Berkeley, who do still run SETI at home, that they were able to get the project off the ground. It was with support from our members that they were able to get it going. And, you know, it became the model for these citizen science distributed… Oh, yeah. Yeah. …projects that are doing such great work now. Yeah. Yeah. And they are still going strong. We still support some SETI projects. We don't do as much of this as we used to. You know, our friends at the SETI Institute, this is largely what they're all about. But we still believe very strongly in SETI. It is a part of our mission to try and find other intelligences. In fact, we're going to have some things to say about a new optical SETI project that we are working on. And we're going to have some things that we are providing support for before too long. And, you know, what could be more exciting? I keep telling everybody involved with SETI that they have to promise to call me first. And then they can call you guys. That's right. But to sum this up, for 20 years now, citizens' computers have been crunching numbers on SETI measurements. And nothing has been found so far, right? No, we're still looking. There are still people. Yeah, I mentioned the Breakthrough Project, Breakthrough Listen, which is now doing the most comprehensive monitoring of both radio frequencies and optical light that has ever been done. It's a big galaxy. And it is entirely possible that we have simply not looked in the right place long enough. And, you know, maybe in another 20 years, we'll be able to say, well, if they're out there, they're not talking to us. At least they're not using radio or light. Maybe they're using neutrinos. Who knows? Oh, yeah. But… How would that work? Communicating through neutrinos? We don't know. They know. Yeah, you'd have to ask the aliens. Okay, fair point. Fair point. But so the Planetary Society is still very much involved in these… really trying to get citizens involved sort of thing. So the light sail is part of that. The home is part of that. Is that one of the missions? To get the public involved through these types of ways? Absolutely. You know, our boss, the science guy, Bill Nye, he likes to say that we do three things. We educate, we create, which would be things like light sail, and we advocate. I did them in the wrong order. Create, advocate, educate. Okay. Create are the projects that we either do ourselves, like light sail, or that we provide support for, promising generally small projects around the world, you know, like our Shoemaker-Neo grant program, where we're helping astronomers, both amateurs and professional astronomers, in their search for near-Earth objects, because we think it's a good idea, you know, to find the rock that would be the sister of the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. And see if we can nudge it off course. That's a big part of what we do. Okay. Advocate is a huge part of what we do, and it's been so successful lately, where we have a guy permanently assigned in Washington, who is advocating on behalf of space science and the Planetary Society mission. Who is that? Is it Casey? Casey is there a lot. Casey spends a lot of time in Washington. Yeah, I always see videos of him walking around D.C. Yeah, he absolutely does that stuff. And we have had several other people involved with our efforts in Washington. Currently, we have picked up a guy who is fairly new with the Society, Brendan Currie. He's our Chief of Washington Operations. But he has a tremendous background. He was a congressional staffer. He used to work for Space Foundation, which is another non-profit, though far better funded than we are, by a lot of the aerospace industry. And now he's working for us, on behalf of our members. And they've had tremendous success in Washington. In fact, you know, if you ask Alan Stern, how is it that New Horizons was finally able to launch toward Pluto and beyond, he gives a lot of credit to the Planetary Society and its members. Really? Because of our efforts. Yeah. We tried to cancel New Horizons, I think, three different times. And it was the Planetary Society's direct action, a grassroots support, that convinced NASA that this was a mission to go forward. And look at the tremendous success that it has been ever since. Definitely, definitely. Just by being sort of like the voice of the people, sort of the voice of ordinary space nerds like us. We sure hope so. We sure hope that that's the mission we're fulfilling. Well, it's interesting that it carries some clout in DC. You know, that it's not just, not to sound cynical, but corporate lobbyists who have way more money and time to steer policy in a certain direction. That it's really great to hear that you have influence. Well, I'll tell you, one of the most successful things we do each year is our Day of Action. And we did it this year for the first time entirely on our own. We had, I think, about 100 volunteers from all over the United States visiting their congressional representatives. And it's a tremendous experience for those volunteers, first of all, who do this on their own dime. They pay their way to DC and then go through our training. And we have been told that these corporate folks who regularly have paid lobbyists all over Capitol Hill, that they're amazed by what we're able to do with these citizen scientists and citizen fans of space. You know, we say our mission is empowering the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration. And this is exactly what happens in DC every April. The third point, educate. How do you do that? Through things like my radio show, Radio Show Podcast, Planetary Radio. I think it's the most popular space exploration podcast outside of NASA and the BBC. How many people are listening? We think that just for the podcast, we generally over time get about 50,000 people listening to every episode. That's great. But we're also on about 120 public radio stations across North America. So we pick up another 50 to 100,000 people that way. It's really hard to say. That's magnificent. We need to do that in Europe, Herbert. Yeah, we need to get that going. We share your mission, so go for it. Yeah, definitely. You mentioned the Planetary Report, the quarterly magazine, which if you don't have it, you should be getting your copy pretty soon. That's a part of our education. It takes a little while. I believe there's a slight delay getting it across the pond. You're really getting a paper copy. I'm getting a paper copy, definitely. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the covers are always amazing. They're one of the few magazines that I can keep laying around in my house. To impress … No, without pissing off my girlfriend. Oh, wow. Because the covers are so nice. You're going to love this new issue. Oh, yeah? It's beautiful. And the new editor, Emily Lakdawalla … Oh, really? … who is our senior editor and planetary evangelist, she is just doing a tremendous job. And you're going to see some great new stuff in the magazine. You know, if you can't wait for the paper version, go online. You can find it at planetary.org. We make it available online now to everybody because our members agree with us that, you know, the idea is to educate, is to get the good word out about space. And that's what we're doing now. But then we got, you know, we have our blog. We've got social media. We have our great video producer. And so these are all ways we educate. And we have programs for – that are still kind of fledgling programs for teachers in schools. For more formal education. And we now also have a couple of online programs, online courses like the one that just went up from Casey Dreyer about advocacy, how to become a space advocate. And one from my colleague, Bruce Betts, just recently went up. So – and anybody can enroll in those. Yeah. I'm trying – I'm thinking of a question that I touched upon earlier in the show. And it's what do you actually do in space? And it's something that I've been asking a couple of space geeks and astronomers. Because there's – sometimes we all advocate space. We all love it. We all love going there. But sometimes I'm also sort of concerned about like how – what will the moon look like in 100 years from now? Will we look up like at some sort of industrial zone? Is it – are we going to project basically the same thing that we did on our own planet? Are we going to do it somewhere else? Yeah. So it always starts with sort of scientific missions and probes and just figuring it out, figuring it out. And we've had a planetary protection officer of ESA on the show. That's right. You know, because you want to guard whatever might be there. But how do you look at this? Will we just extend our human civilization there? Should we be really protective of what we find over there? How do you look at all the danger of maybe ruining a bunch of space? Or the damage of other planets, so to speak? Well, it's a big concern, isn't it? And this is why it's been nice to see more calls lately for the protection of at least like lunar landing sites. But you're right. I mean if in 100 years we have giant robotic earthmovers scraping the lunar surface for helium-3 to power our fusion reactors, you know, something will definitely have been lost. At least with the Moon, the Mars, as far as we know so far, there are no indigenous peoples for us to, you know, enslave or wipe out. But, you know, the Planetary Society, I think it's safe to say, we are very much in favor of planetary protection. We think that we need to learn about these places and not defile them. Will there be money to be made on these bodies? I'm sure there will be. There has been every place else humans have expanded to. But, you know, maybe, maybe we have a chance to do it right this time and strike a much better balance between protecting these pristine places and using their resources in some sensible, intelligent way. The Planetary Society doesn't really, to my knowledge, have a position on this. So I'm speaking pretty much for myself. I'm definitely for planetary protection. Yeah. Yeah, I once, I don't know, I thought about maybe asteroid mining. I don't think that people have such a hard time. But indeed, yeah, looking up at the Moon, do we want to keep it pristine? Do we only scrape off the top of the dark side of the Moon? You know, it's like… We'll just do tourism. Yeah, just do tourism, indeed. Yeah, it's interesting. Maybe the Planetary Society can do that. Maybe we might start thinking about it, like if this is all really happening eventually. You know, wouldn't it be great if the time comes when it really becomes important, not just in a philosophical sense, to deal with this kind of stuff? And yes, I bet you that is something we'd be very involved with if we reach that point. Yeah, yeah. So far, I guess the light sail won't, won't balloon too soon. I'd like to get back to that for a couple more minutes. Of course. Because what actually is the purpose? Does light sail one, two, is it just there for educational purpose? Do you want to have some publicity and educate people about, well, whatever space science is involved there? Or do you envision a next mission that becomes possible once you've done the proof of concept of light sail two, that you can move an orbit? All of the above. So, we have no plans for light sail three, but we are hoping that others will be seeing the success of light sail two and saying, hey, you know, there really is a tremendous advantage to using this technology. And, you know, the Planetary Society will share this technology. And hopefully others will take advantage of it and further the exploration of the solar system and maybe even beyond. Yeah. Our executive director emeritus talks about using a light sail, much bigger probably than light sail two, to go out to a point beyond Pluto where you could actually do some amazing astronomy. You could use the light of other stars through good old Einstein, general relativity, to amplify or magnify things that are far more distant that, you know, if you were able to line things up properly, you could image the surfaces of exoplanets, nearby exoplanets. But to do that, you would need to use the bending of light through relativity. And you've got to be in the right place. Well, a light sail would be a way to get out to those points. That's just one far out use. That's ambitious, yeah. You know, we are seeing CubeSats begin to explore around the solar system. Those Marco CubeSats that very successfully went along with the InSat. They were a great insight lander and flew past Mars and sent back data from InSat as it was landing. There might be big advantages to this. But the education side and the inspirational side is just as important to us. Because we know the power of an exciting mission like light sail two to inspire everybody, but especially young people and get them excited about not just space but science. Yeah. So, you plan a light sail three. What do you plan to do in the future as a next mission? We have plenty to keep us busy. I don't think we're... I wasn't worried. Space is a big place. Yes, space is a big place. And while we don't have specific plans for another space mission of our own, we'll have lots of stuff for us to advocate for and many other projects for us to continue to support. You said maybe the light, the SETI at home light project. I don't know what you called it. What did you just call it? Optical SETI. Right. Optical SETI. So, what would that be? Well, we've been supporting an optical SETI project out of Harvard University for quite a few years. And it's our partnership with some guys at Harvard that did some of the pioneering work in radio frequency SETI as well. This new project, I'm not... Yeah, boy, I'm reluctant to say much because I'm not sure how much we're saying about this so far. But it will essentially be... Give us a scoop. Yeah. I'll go halfway. It's a partnership with a group at another prominent university that is doing some very innovative things with optical SETI. And, you know, I wish I... Boy, I should have looked into this because it might be perfectly okay for me to talk about it. But I will say no more. But we have some nice announcements coming up. Okay. Really great. We'll keep watching you. Yeah, exactly. Good. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Hey, any more questions, Herbert? Are you... Not from me. No, no, no. I mean, there's still plenty to chat about. One last question I had is, which goes back to how we started the show. You just had Jim Bridenstine on. Yeah, you said the Planetary Society looked at him as a good guy. How did you gauge him? Well, it's, you know, this is a work in progress. What we have seen so far seems to be a guy who is a true believer. He really loves space exploration and he sees the potential of space development, not just out there but down here. He agrees with us that space, as Bill Nye says, brings us together and brings out the best in us. And, you know, he always stresses the importance of information. He's always been a believer in the possibility of international collaboration. So he's only been in the job for a year. We have a long ways to go to see if he's, you know, someday going to be seen as one of the really successful NASA administrators who leads the agency into, through a great period of exploration and development. We're cautiously optimistic, but of course NASA is just a part of the executive branch of the U.S. government. So he's going to only do what he's allowed to do and what he's funded to do. Yeah. And is there – does it ever happen that a NASA administrator stays on even though the president switches parties, like a different president is voted in? Yes. I – boy, Casey would be the right person to ask that question. But I'm almost certain that that has happened at least for limited amounts of time. Yeah, hold on. It is a political – right. It is a political appointment. You did see this in fact with the acting administrator, Robert Lightfoot. Oh, no. I take that back. I'm sorry. I think Lightfoot did take over at about the time that President Trump came into office. I – boy, I'm sorry I'm not as – No worries. I'm not on that, as I should be. But I do believe that there have been some administrators who were able to carry through more than one administration. Yeah. I think that Charles Baldwin was – I think he was there until Jim Bridenstine was – was born. Which took like about a year or so, right? It was Bolden who left when President Trump came into office. And Robert Lightfoot, very capable associate administrator, took over as acting administrator and is generally recognized to have done a really good job in that acting position. Okay. Okay. Well, we'll see. I think we'll see. That's what a lot of these things. I mean, even the U.S. landing on the moon again with a female, by the way. That's a big part of it. That's right. That's why it's Artemis. Yeah, that's why it's Artemis, of course. But no names yet. No names and no budget. No budget, no. But there is a timeline and we'll see. I mean, it can be President Trump's crowning achievement of his administration. I believe right now it's planned for like about a month before he leaves office. So after his, if he gets a second term. And if not, we'll just, we'll see. There's plenty of stuff. And hopefully you'll keep us updated as well, Matt. I'd be happy to do that, guys. And I congratulate you on the Space Cowboys podcast. Thank you. We do share the same mission. We do. And, you know, we're out there making sure that, well, our vision is know the cosmos and our place within it. And I think that's what you guys are helping to accomplish. Yeah. So thank you for the great work you do. Well, thank you. Thank you. And for being on the show as well. And we'll just, I mean, we call ourselves Cowboys and we're also exploring like what is there to know. So we'll see. Frontiers. Yeah, frontiers everywhere. We'll see where it takes us. I'll see you on the final frontier. It's been great fun. Definitely. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Matt.