WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en-US 00:01:15.350 --> 00:01:16.900 [Please stand by for realtime captions.] >> Good evening everyone and thank you for coming 00:01:16.900 --> 00:01:22.360 to the USGS [Indiscernible - speaker too far from the microphone] my name is [Indiscernible 00:01:22.360 --> 00:01:25.010 name] and thank you again for coming. Tonight I have the pleasure of having Justin Haggerty 00:01:25.010 --> 00:02:20.510 from the USGS aster geology partner and Dr. Haggerty 419 98, 2001, University of New Mexico 00:02:20.510 --> 00:02:26.130 and Dr. Harry joined USGS in four [Indiscernible - speaker too far from the microphone] and 00:02:26.130 --> 00:02:28.410 focused on the composition of information [Indiscernible - muffled] the geologic evolution 00:02:28.410 --> 00:02:32.040 of [Indiscernible - muffled] presidential early career awards 00:02:32.040 --> 00:02:37.220 in 2012 [Indiscernible - muffled] information and evolution of [Indiscernible - muffled]. 00:02:37.220 --> 00:02:47.720 He is now the director of the USGS geology center and to support the geological findings 00:02:47.720 --> 00:02:55.150 USGS geology [Indiscernible - speaker too far from the microphone] in the general public's 00:02:55.150 --> 00:03:06.780 pursuit innovative and [Indiscernible - muffled]. 00:03:06.780 --> 00:03:10.050 [Applause] 00:03:10.050 --> 00:03:23.070 Hello everybody . Amazing turnout thank you for coming out tonight. I'm excited to get 00:03:23.070 --> 00:03:28.079 this presentation for a lot of reasons tonight. First and foremost this is my first trip to 00:03:28.079 --> 00:03:31.780 Menlo Park I know that there is a little bit of a transition going on with Menlo right 00:03:31.780 --> 00:03:35.260 now but I'm excited to have the opportunity to be here tonight. I'm also excited by the 00:03:35.260 --> 00:03:36.540 fact that many of you may know that aster geology actually had its first beginning here 00:03:36.540 --> 00:05:19.500 in Menlo Park and Jane Shoemaker the founder of astro geology first started with this concept 00:05:19.500 --> 00:05:21.210 of astro geology in the early 60s here reporting at this center of operations in Arizona. Another 00:05:21.210 --> 00:05:23.180 Reno the reason I'm doing this presentation tonight is that within even the USGS whenever 00:05:23.180 --> 00:05:26.850 I travel to all of the different centers it is everybody knows about astro geology which 00:05:26.850 --> 00:05:30.660 is really interesting is my opportunity to tell all of you about who we are and what 00:05:30.660 --> 00:05:34.400 we do and where we came from and what we're doing now in the work we're doing in the future 00:05:34.400 --> 00:05:35.870 and it is my goal by the end of this presentation that you see why I'm so excited to be a part 00:05:35.870 --> 00:05:36.950 of astrogeology to be part of the legacy and to have the opportunity to work with so many 00:05:36.950 --> 00:05:38.210 incredibly talented people courting incredible work and as a matter fact I think online tonight 00:05:38.210 --> 00:05:41.500 we have several folks from the center who are joining us and everybody in flight staff 00:05:41.500 --> 00:05:42.500 and thank you for joining us. You probably heard already I use the phrase astrogeology 00:05:42.500 --> 00:05:43.500 several times and it's interesting this cannot as aster apology. Aster apology. We actually 00:05:43.500 --> 00:05:44.500 -- [Indiscernible - muffled] so we will talk more about the work that we do in astrogeology. 00:05:44.500 --> 00:05:50.240 I want to start off with talking a little bit about our founder Dr. Shoemaker who again 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:56.320 basically started the field of astrogeology and let me ask a question before I go much 00:05:56.320 --> 00:05:59.280 further. How many of you actually know the meaning of the word astrogeology with a show 00:05:59.280 --> 00:07:12.110 of hands really quickly. About five years ago it sounded interesting but where does 00:07:12.110 --> 00:07:16.050 it mean and where does it come from and [Indiscernible - muffled] origin 00:07:16.050 --> 00:07:17.160 for the training of the Apollo astronaut. That's something that they have as a provision 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:21.400 was to work very closely with NASA to make sure we can train and unfortunately due to 00:07:21.400 --> 00:07:23.610 a medical condition he was not able to become an astronaut so he wanted to make sure that 00:07:23.610 --> 00:07:26.840 he could do the next best thing which is to train people that were going to go there so 00:07:26.840 --> 00:07:29.790 that basically they wanted to make sure that people could 00:07:29.790 --> 00:07:32.730 go would be [Indiscernible - muffled] and another defining characteristic [Indiscernible 00:07:32.730 --> 00:07:36.720 - muffled] ideas making sure everybody's on board and I have never had the opportunity 00:07:36.720 --> 00:07:44.470 to meet Dr. -- but I've heard many stories about how of a visionary he was and the pursuit 00:07:44.470 --> 00:07:48.770 that he engaged in. I was fortunate enough to meet his colleagues and his wife, Carolyn 00:07:48.770 --> 00:07:55.430 Shoemaker and [Indiscernible - muffled] which is really important thing to have the fact 00:07:55.430 --> 00:08:01.390 that not only was he able to do that but he was able to inspire and engage individuals 00:08:01.390 --> 00:08:10.150 for the vision to be implemented and I think we have a long-standing sentiment to that 00:08:10.150 --> 00:08:16.370 quality of having astrogeology continue to be here many years after its foundation. Many 00:08:16.370 --> 00:08:21.880 people tend to ask why would Jean actually want to go all the way out to [Indiscernible 00:08:21.880 --> 00:08:27.880 - muffled] in the middle of nowhere to actually do that kind of research . There is a variety 00:08:27.880 --> 00:08:33.370 of reasons for the main reason is there is a variety what we call terrestrial analog 00:08:33.370 --> 00:08:40.390 in the air and what I mean by that is if there is a geologic process that we can investigate 00:08:40.390 --> 00:08:48.840 in detail here and we suspect that those processes are active or present if we can understand 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:54.050 them very well here and when we observe them on the planet we make sure that we can use 00:08:54.050 --> 00:08:58.050 our knowledge from here and make inferences about those features may have been formed 00:08:58.050 --> 00:09:07.389 and evolved in other planetary surfaces. An example is [Indiscernible - muffled] there 00:09:07.389 --> 00:09:12.730 is other features similar to that solar system and more importantly when Jean was looking 00:09:12.730 --> 00:09:17.920 in Arizona in addition to being one of the most gorgeous features in the world he understood 00:09:17.920 --> 00:09:22.829 that the Grand Canyon represented one of those features that maintain a record of a variety 00:09:22.829 --> 00:09:31.480 of geological processes. As such it was important when he brought the astronauts out to bring 00:09:31.480 --> 00:09:36.810 them to places like the ring Canyon so they can see for themselves that record of geologic 00:09:36.810 --> 00:09:42.130 processes and what they look like and understand how they form and train the fundamentals on 00:09:42.130 --> 00:09:49.690 geologic processes. Another reason why Arizona was of interest was because of the crater, 00:09:49.690 --> 00:09:56.369 east of Arizona located in [Indiscernible] this is a feature that was initially thought 00:09:56.369 --> 00:10:02.209 to be volcanic and Jean had a role in helping to define that this was actually produced 00:10:02.209 --> 00:10:07.990 by a large-scale [Indiscernible] so in addition to finding things like Ira Nichols and factors 00:10:07.990 --> 00:10:16.370 [Indiscernible - muffled] near the crater Jean also found evidence of a rare mineral 00:10:16.370 --> 00:10:23.110 that at the time it was thought to be produced only in the high pressure high energy environment 00:10:23.110 --> 00:10:31.149 that could only be impacted by what we see in the crater. Understanding that this is 00:10:31.149 --> 00:10:36.689 preserved impact crater on the earth located next to some of these other geological features 00:10:36.689 --> 00:10:42.790 you can actually go there and see the processes and understand how important the process like 00:10:42.790 --> 00:10:52.839 this is because if you look at other planet [Indiscernible - muffled] water erosion impact 00:10:52.839 --> 00:10:58.880 craters are in massive important process for the entirety of the solar system and we have 00:10:58.880 --> 00:11:04.279 the best preserved ones here and right outside our back door it's really important for us 00:11:04.279 --> 00:11:12.600 to go there and understand it and make implications for other type features on [Indiscernible 00:11:12.600 --> 00:11:25.490 - muffled]. >> [Indiscernible - muffled] you see a variety of other geological panic features 00:11:25.490 --> 00:11:30.660 and this is a really important volcanic [Indiscernible] from the perspective it shows a wide variety 00:11:30.660 --> 00:11:36.079 of volcanic types and compositions and as you start to look at it a lot of the flow 00:11:36.079 --> 00:11:43.649 features look very reminiscent of the salt and fleecy another planet including [Indiscernible 00:11:43.649 --> 00:11:49.970 - muffled] so provide a great opportunity to show the astronauts what well-preserved 00:11:49.970 --> 00:11:54.189 features look like in the way they understand that and they take that knowledge and apply 00:11:54.189 --> 00:11:59.970 it to other surfaces on places like the [Indiscernible - muffled] so for example your start to look 00:11:59.970 --> 00:12:03.399 at some of these features in detail and compare them to what you see on the [Indiscernible 00:12:03.399 --> 00:12:11.089 - muffled] you can see fascinating comparisons. When the astronauts were able to get to the 00:12:11.089 --> 00:12:15.959 lunar surface they medially started to see a lot of those features again that they saw 00:12:15.959 --> 00:12:22.009 while they were in northern Arizona and a variety of volcanic activity so they were 00:12:22.009 --> 00:12:27.009 well prepared after going to the training in northern Arizona to make inferences about 00:12:27.009 --> 00:12:32.740 what these features were and why they were important for the human revolution. Many of 00:12:32.740 --> 00:12:38.449 you recognize the footprint from the Apollo astronauts. The footprint represents quite 00:12:38.449 --> 00:12:45.360 a few things. It represents the vision, it represents the work by many many people and 00:12:45.360 --> 00:12:50.980 thankfully astrogeology was in large part of helping to get that footprint on the surface 00:12:50.980 --> 00:12:58.050 of the moon and in particular some of the things we assisted with were helping to testing 00:12:58.050 --> 00:13:04.699 of the Apollo astronauts as well as tools . We also helped to identify and characterize 00:13:04.699 --> 00:13:11.369 and [Indiscernible - muffled] for the Apollo astronauts and we also participate in something 00:13:11.369 --> 00:13:16.129 known as [Indiscernible - muffled]. What that means is as you collect information about 00:13:16.129 --> 00:13:20.509 the things that are there you want to find out tasks for where the us nuts are going 00:13:20.509 --> 00:13:33.089 to go so they can make the most observations and the thing we are most known for is training 00:13:33.089 --> 00:13:45.819 the Apollo astronauts. So the training could be done anywhere and much of that training 00:13:45.819 --> 00:13:55.749 was actually done by the space Center in Houston, Texas. It became clear that they want to make 00:13:55.749 --> 00:14:00.230 sure that they [Indiscernible - muffled] everything and environmental similar to what they could 00:14:00.230 --> 00:14:05.129 possibly get and you have seen the surface in northern Arizona is similar to that. So 00:14:05.129 --> 00:14:15.769 they tested the terrains and areas that had the Sultan materials and because of that they 00:14:15.769 --> 00:14:19.619 were able to fully test all of these things before they got to the moon and they were 00:14:19.619 --> 00:14:31.480 assured that this would operate the tools would operate efficiently. Over on the right 00:14:31.480 --> 00:14:42.019 we have Apollo 17 astronaut Dr. Eric Jack Schmidt who is also a geologist and the reason 00:14:42.019 --> 00:14:48.540 I we're showing this image is because it represents a unique thing that is now commonplace in 00:14:48.540 --> 00:14:54.629 terms of mission operation and it was used basically with a television camera and television 00:14:54.629 --> 00:15:02.929 at that time was novel technology and there were some people thought it should not be 00:15:02.929 --> 00:15:09.069 used or would not be used as part of the Apollo program. But during the training of the astronauts 00:15:09.069 --> 00:15:15.399 in northern Arizona it was found that the it was critical that the television cameras 00:15:15.399 --> 00:15:21.019 could be held while the astronauts is conducting activities so the experts could say don't 00:15:21.019 --> 00:15:26.220 go there, you should go here, something like that. Because of that the it really helped 00:15:26.220 --> 00:15:34.529 them to determine that they needed to have that technology . As I mentioned in northern 00:15:34.529 --> 00:15:43.730 Arizona is a fantastic analog in a way however, we do have the [Indiscernible - muffled] relatively 00:15:43.730 --> 00:15:52.189 large to us but we did not have an area where it represented large amounts of craters in 00:15:52.189 --> 00:15:56.600 close proximity to each other so when you look at this portion of the moon there about 00:15:56.600 --> 00:16:03.420 the same size of the area you can see here a little dense coverage but we wanted to make 00:16:03.420 --> 00:16:07.389 sure we have something to try and help the astronauts train in an environment like that 00:16:07.389 --> 00:16:09.730 and I can't imagine how something like that would have been. [Indiscernible - muffled] 00:16:09.730 --> 00:16:11.639 they took an image of that from Oracle mission to the Apollo and try to reproduce that as 00:16:11.639 --> 00:16:14.040 closely as they possibly could and logistically trying to see how it will be for the astronauts 00:16:14.040 --> 00:16:19.050 to weave in and out of these craters and also in doing that it gave them some insight into 00:16:19.050 --> 00:16:21.509 what the craters actually tell us about services. [Indiscernible - muffled] ratio and also understanding 00:16:21.509 --> 00:16:25.899 the relationship of the crater to one another and how they interoperate to tell a story 00:16:25.899 --> 00:16:30.699 about the surface history. If you want one comparison of an overlay of [Indiscernible 00:16:30.699 --> 00:17:33.160 - muffled] it is a perfect match. There able to take that information again do some training 00:17:33.160 --> 00:17:34.160 with the astronauts while they were here so perhaps more importantly help us understand 00:17:34.160 --> 00:17:37.130 those relationships spatially and horizontally and vertically to one another such that we 00:17:37.130 --> 00:17:42.290 can [Indiscernible - muffled] first geologic map of the planetary [Indiscernible - muffled] 00:17:42.290 --> 00:17:50.050 so this is the Apollo mission and geologic maps for all missions based on these relationships 00:17:50.050 --> 00:17:55.490 and their absolutely fascinating. I mentioned that first finding was more in detail but 00:17:55.490 --> 00:18:04.559 here is the [Indiscernible - muffled] ended up not going very far it was quite a miracle 00:18:04.559 --> 00:18:11.200 to actually get that at all but what they did is help them understand where they wanted 00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:20.650 to go to makes observations and collect additional samples. Perhaps most importantly the thing 00:18:20.650 --> 00:18:24.830 we were involved in was the astronauts training and one thing that many people may not be 00:18:24.830 --> 00:18:29.860 aware of is outside of [Indiscernible - muffled] the majority of the Apollo astronauts were 00:18:29.860 --> 00:18:34.600 [Indiscernible - muffled] and well there were certainly exceptional and intelligent not 00:18:34.600 --> 00:18:40.990 all of that not all of them had background in geology so they had to take a crash course 00:18:40.990 --> 00:18:48.470 to understand what the geologic principles were so they can basically be the version 00:18:48.470 --> 00:18:52.490 of Dr. Shoemaker while they were out there making sure that they collect the samples 00:18:52.490 --> 00:19:00.080 that they needed to collect. So Jean along with the colleagues throughout USGS, NASA 00:19:00.080 --> 00:19:05.149 and other institutions altogether decided that they were going to put together a program 00:19:05.149 --> 00:19:09.130 of study for those astronauts and they would take them to other locations I showed you 00:19:09.130 --> 00:19:15.169 earlier, the Grand Canyon, [Indiscernible - muffled] to help train them in basic fundamentals 00:19:15.169 --> 00:19:22.760 of geology so when they went to the moon they could make key observations. The Apollo 14 00:19:22.760 --> 00:19:27.169 the astronauts were getting really really good at making these observations and collecting 00:19:27.169 --> 00:19:32.940 samples and it became apparent that they needed to go further to make more observations. So 00:19:32.940 --> 00:19:38.090 the decision was made to come up with rover allowed the astronauts to travel greater distances 00:19:38.090 --> 00:19:46.510 to find new discoveries and collect more [Indiscernible - muffled]. In order to be prepared for was 00:19:46.510 --> 00:19:52.490 to have enrolled they want to make sure they have the training and astrogeology [Indiscernible 00:19:52.490 --> 00:19:58.139 - muffled] deciding to build what you see her rover geological [Indiscernible - muffled] 00:19:58.139 --> 00:20:06.799 a budget of about $1900 to put this thing together which is about $16,000 of today's 00:20:06.799 --> 00:20:14.490 money which is still pretty [Indiscernible - muffled] so they put the astronauts on this 00:20:14.490 --> 00:20:21.130 vehicle and it turned 90 degrees relative to the front and rear and you can get into 00:20:21.130 --> 00:20:26.630 a lot of really interesting places. So they are able to train on that 00:20:26.630 --> 00:20:32.549 before the end up going to the moon. Here is the version that did get sent looks like 00:20:32.549 --> 00:20:39.320 and if you're interested in seeing what over looks like we still have the actual one in 00:20:39.320 --> 00:20:46.870 our lobby suddenly encourage everyone to check that out. This is the one that again they 00:20:46.870 --> 00:20:53.820 used on the moon and it's actually very [Indiscernible - muffled] with the exception of the tires 00:20:53.820 --> 00:20:59.039 we don't have pressurized wheels but other than that everything is functioning the same 00:20:59.039 --> 00:21:07.279 so after hearing when the Apollo astronauts came back lessons learned they continuously 00:21:07.279 --> 00:21:14.490 cited their experiences in Arizona and the things they learned, resources and education 00:21:14.490 --> 00:21:18.600 and they found out that more often than not that they learn a lot from things that did 00:21:18.600 --> 00:21:23.750 not go right and during training in Arizona a lot of it did not go right and they had 00:21:23.750 --> 00:21:29.480 to come up with new ways of doing things so they could continue with the mission and that 00:21:29.480 --> 00:21:35.171 actually came into being pretty handy later in the expedition where [Indiscernible - muffled] 00:21:35.171 --> 00:21:48.169 one of them actually broke loose and [Indiscernible - muffled] regular soil of 00:21:48.169 --> 00:21:56.380 the region around the rover getting into all the rover pieces and [Indiscernible - muffled] 00:21:56.380 --> 00:22:01.110 the astronauts themselves it actually became quite dangerous so USGS had to come to the 00:22:01.110 --> 00:22:11.420 rescue one more time and they had to make a geologic map that we gave them an actually 00:22:11.420 --> 00:22:18.799 [Indiscernible - muffled] and that's perfectly fine because it helps them come up with a 00:22:18.799 --> 00:22:27.710 greater solution. One of the things that I will notice possibly an urban legend but interesting 00:22:27.710 --> 00:22:35.120 and fun story to tell so [Indiscernible - muffled] he was one of the [Indiscernible] focus during 00:22:35.120 --> 00:22:39.659 Apollo 17 and he liked to tell a story that Jack Schmidt was coming back on one of the 00:22:39.659 --> 00:22:46.679 [Indiscernible - muffled] rover and as he was coming back he had to look up to decide 00:22:46.679 --> 00:22:53.210 any thought he saw this really interesting color and he said that's amazing I would love 00:22:53.210 --> 00:23:00.009 to get a sample of that. He radioed back down and said hey, I think I found something and 00:23:00.009 --> 00:23:04.429 no, your resources are low we have to get back to [Indiscernible - muffled] and he said 00:23:04.429 --> 00:23:14.700 he had a mechanical failure [Indiscernible - muffled] wrap the sample and brought one 00:23:14.700 --> 00:23:17.220 back. Turns that additional cameras were [Indiscernible - muffled] but it turns out that these samples 00:23:17.220 --> 00:23:20.519 these beads are very different colors but some of the samples collected actually was 00:23:20.519 --> 00:23:23.320 exceptionally [Indiscernible - muffled] for our understanding and further analyses within 00:23:23.320 --> 00:23:27.059 the past 10 years has shown us that these beads are [Indiscernible - muffled] and some 00:23:27.059 --> 00:23:32.680 of the collections of the unique samples that were able to be identified with some of the 00:23:32.680 --> 00:23:40.269 training that they had to let to collect these fascinating samples that tell us a lot more 00:23:40.269 --> 00:23:46.190 about the moon that we would not have had the samples not been collected. Another exciting 00:23:46.190 --> 00:23:51.299 time in our history and a history of Astra geology as well but as things started to come 00:23:51.299 --> 00:23:55.770 to an end thanks to some of the collections of these 00:23:55.770 --> 00:23:59.840 unique samples that were able to be identified by somebody who is looking out to them because 00:23:59.840 --> 00:24:04.110 of some of the training they had they were able to collect these fascinating samples 00:24:04.110 --> 00:24:10.110 that tell us a lot more about them had we not had those samples collected. That was 00:24:10.110 --> 00:24:16.330 an exciting time in our history not only NASA history but the country's history of the world's 00:24:16.330 --> 00:24:21.570 history and astrogeology but as things started to come to an end: budget started to decline 00:24:21.570 --> 00:24:27.000 and got a little bit scary for everyone and everyone said okay, what's next? It was not 00:24:27.000 --> 00:24:31.759 clear what the next plan was going to be and if astrogeology is going to survive so thankfully 00:24:31.759 --> 00:24:39.070 some of the center directors who came before me had a vision to say we may not be doing 00:24:39.070 --> 00:24:43.409 them anymore NASA still has a plan we need to make sure that we can do whatever we can 00:24:43.409 --> 00:24:48.630 to support Nassau to the best of our abilities regardless where they go. Since that time 00:24:48.630 --> 00:24:56.600 we have been involved pretty much every successful active mission to the solar system and my 00:24:56.600 --> 00:25:02.809 precursor science center director one of his favorite things to say was 00:25:02.809 --> 00:25:08.649 USGS has been involved in every successful mission all of the ones that were not successful 00:25:08.649 --> 00:25:14.850 we were not involved in so just letting you know that if you want to have a successful 00:25:14.850 --> 00:25:19.950 mission make sure we are involved. Since that time we have been involved with everything 00:25:19.950 --> 00:25:24.159 missions to Mercury, the inner solar system in creating this beautiful mosaic you see 00:25:24.159 --> 00:25:28.240 here and going all the way out to the outer reaches of the solar system to Pluto again 00:25:28.240 --> 00:25:35.340 and the mosaic involved in here and moon and Mars clearly important that we have people 00:25:35.340 --> 00:25:41.630 in all aspects of the solar system. One of the things that's really interesting is that 00:25:41.630 --> 00:25:47.279 we also made a conscious decision to broaden the level of experience and depth of expense 00:25:47.279 --> 00:25:51.640 in our workforce and a lot of people what they seem to think when we say that we do 00:25:51.640 --> 00:25:56.179 planetary science they think it's an exclusive field, that's a really unique expertise and 00:25:56.179 --> 00:26:00.399 it turns out planetary science is far more than that. It is all of these different things 00:26:00.399 --> 00:26:05.480 combined so we have been able to build a workforce over the years and up to today where we have 00:26:05.480 --> 00:26:09.710 people who do all of these different things that we come together as a team to do some 00:26:09.710 --> 00:26:15.570 really fascinating work to make sure we can explore the entirety of the solar system. 00:26:15.570 --> 00:26:22.320 What you see here is our business model for how we are now the orders of NASA in terms 00:26:22.320 --> 00:26:27.759 of supporting the like lifecycle of planetary spacecraft missions and it's an endless loop 00:26:27.759 --> 00:26:32.450 where you start with research operations as a scientist, 00:26:32.450 --> 00:26:36.830 they have data and to make an observation and generate new knowledge and new questions 00:26:36.830 --> 00:26:41.130 and those new questions then need an answer and they can be answered to development of 00:26:41.130 --> 00:26:45.140 instruments and missions that can then go to planetary bodies and make observations 00:26:45.140 --> 00:26:50.799 to help answer those questions. Once the data are collected from those missions something 00:26:50.799 --> 00:26:56.879 needs to be done with that data raw planetary spacecraft data needs a lot of work for it 00:26:56.879 --> 00:27:03.679 to be useful to scientists and make interpretations. What you can see here is we go then to the 00:27:03.679 --> 00:27:07.850 next stage where you take that raw data and create the spatial data infrastructure and 00:27:07.850 --> 00:27:12.860 make the data ready for scientists to make interpretations. Those data that need to be 00:27:12.860 --> 00:27:18.090 archived and disseminated throughout the world to other planetary scientists so they in turn 00:27:18.090 --> 00:27:22.850 can make you observations that generates new questions that continues the cycle. In the 00:27:22.850 --> 00:27:28.730 middle is our support staff, our administrative staff or I.T. staff the heart of our operation 00:27:28.730 --> 00:27:32.909 and they're the ones helping to make sure we continue to be able to operate at the level 00:27:32.909 --> 00:27:39.220 that we do. At the top of that diagram use of research operations. We have world-class 00:27:39.220 --> 00:27:43.070 scientists in our group and I would love to be able to tell you every single project that 00:27:43.070 --> 00:27:47.870 all of them work on, it's simply not enough time and hopefully we will have some of them 00:27:47.870 --> 00:27:51.870 come out and give similar presentations on all the work they do but two examples I have 00:27:51.870 --> 00:27:58.049 your one on the left is an image of the surface of Mars. The Rocky the way the color and material 00:27:58.049 --> 00:28:04.320 is the way of an impact crater in this impact crater was observed by an orbital mission 00:28:04.320 --> 00:28:09.420 around Mars through an instrument called high-rise. As this instrument was being flown through 00:28:09.420 --> 00:28:16.289 the surface of Mars it would take an observation or a time and come back and take another observation 00:28:16.289 --> 00:28:20.960 and in doing that they found that one of these impact craters in particular the first time 00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:25.120 around they do not see anything of particular interest in next time they came around they 00:28:25.120 --> 00:28:30.029 saw these dark streaks you see here these tens of meters long dark streaks and that 00:28:30.029 --> 00:28:36.429 told him that there appear to be some sort of active geologic process and with NASA school 00:28:36.429 --> 00:28:40.370 at the time being to follow the water there were a lot of people that thought perhaps 00:28:40.370 --> 00:28:44.429 this could be signs of flowing liquid water of the on the surface of Mars. 00:28:44.429 --> 00:28:48.860 Turns out that's a really difficult thing to do but our signs have been able to put 00:28:48.860 --> 00:28:55.320 together some really fascinating products to take a look at in immense detail and do 00:28:55.320 --> 00:28:59.370 in a reliable manner such that they can come up with an alternative hypothesis that suggests 00:28:59.370 --> 00:29:06.030 it was not water at all it was slope activated sand flows that were a result of interactions 00:29:06.030 --> 00:29:10.850 with with events and that sort of thing. It made a lot of people within NASA a little 00:29:10.850 --> 00:29:15.789 bit angry that it was not water in fact, we now refer to the gentleman with this discovery 00:29:15.789 --> 00:29:22.270 as the dream crusher but there is still an active debate as to whether or not these are 00:29:22.270 --> 00:29:28.999 actually strictly sand drive features or something else entirely. Over on the right you may have 00:29:28.999 --> 00:29:34.860 seen there is an article that came out yesterday talking about one of the moons around Saturn 00:29:34.860 --> 00:29:40.710 and this is something we have been doing a lot of work on lately. And it is covered on 00:29:40.710 --> 00:29:45.320 the outside by an icy sphere and its thought there might actually be a liquid water ocean 00:29:45.320 --> 00:29:50.759 underneath that icy sphere so the long stretches you see there are actually long sisters that 00:29:50.759 --> 00:29:59.280 have water organisms where water is heated and is extruded onto the surface in the firm 00:29:59.280 --> 00:30:09.519 form of volcanism. and we have made sure that all this data is put together that we are 00:30:09.519 --> 00:30:14.539 100% certain that the pixels are in place when you see these features that are active 00:30:14.539 --> 00:30:19.600 we can make certain that they are really active in representing the processes we believe that 00:30:19.600 --> 00:30:27.769 they are which in this case appears to be liquid water oceans underneath the icy surface. 00:30:27.769 --> 00:30:33.320 We also have a variety of people in our group that are active in planetary spacecraft missions. 00:30:33.320 --> 00:30:41.870 The most active ones being the Rovers on Mars including MSL, and we have people who actually 00:30:41.870 --> 00:30:46.470 do things that are quite similar to what the Apollo astronauts did back in the day which 00:30:46.470 --> 00:30:51.440 is to help them make observations, collect those observations, make new plans and decide 00:30:51.440 --> 00:30:56.399 where Rover is going to go the next day and what new observations is going to make and 00:30:56.399 --> 00:31:02.879 what new sciences being drive from those observations. It turns out that one of our scientists actually 00:31:02.879 --> 00:31:08.580 was able to put together this selfie which is one of the most popular imagers of the 00:31:08.580 --> 00:31:13.740 Mars curiosity Rover. Over the years after several decades more and more missions are 00:31:13.740 --> 00:31:18.120 going to more and more location psychology increasing and getting better we increasingly 00:31:18.120 --> 00:31:23.559 get more and more data all the time and to the point that becomes a little bit difficult 00:31:23.559 --> 00:31:31.159 to handle. We at astrogeology we have the imaging note of NASA's planetary data system 00:31:31.159 --> 00:31:36.169 and what that means is that we have data from all spacecrafts that have been active since 00:31:36.169 --> 00:31:42.180 the beginning of the spacecraft exploration era. That's a lot a lot of data we have about 00:31:42.180 --> 00:31:46.840 three petabytes of data that we store in our centers which is quite a bit for a center 00:31:46.840 --> 00:31:53.259 that only about 65 people in size. The largest center for data in the USGS 00:31:53.259 --> 00:31:59.120 that maintains a lot of data on behalf of USGS and we are second only to them in terms 00:31:59.120 --> 00:32:05.879 of the amount of data we have. It is one thing to store the data and it's another to make 00:32:05.879 --> 00:32:10.730 it usable to the planetary science community so we have come develop a software package 00:32:10.730 --> 00:32:15.940 called ices. We had the day before the other group you might be thinking up and is referred 00:32:15.940 --> 00:32:23.570 to integrated software imagers and spectrometers and it standardizes it and makes it usable 00:32:23.570 --> 00:32:29.059 in a way you can extract it and send it to people throughout the world so they can make 00:32:29.059 --> 00:32:33.200 sciences scientific observation so some examples of that include things like these elevation 00:32:33.200 --> 00:32:38.780 models and this is a digital elevation model proportion of the surface of Mars where the 00:32:38.780 --> 00:32:45.279 long axis represents kilometers in length. The main reason for looking at these 3-D structures 00:32:45.279 --> 00:32:49.480 is to provide you with a new perspective looking at things even when you looked at it in two 00:32:49.480 --> 00:32:53.869 dimensions for a long time so when you see it in three dimensions it open up the relationships 00:32:53.869 --> 00:32:58.639 between features telling you more about how those features may have formed and involved 00:32:58.639 --> 00:33:06.700 and how they're relative to one another. Another thing we do is provide global mosaics in the 00:33:06.700 --> 00:33:11.460 planetary science community. It may not seem like a big deal because what some people think 00:33:11.460 --> 00:33:15.720 happens is that if spacecraft goes to a planet, it parks in front of the planet and takes 00:33:15.720 --> 00:33:20.770 this amazing one-shot image high-resolution image of the planet and then you're done. 00:33:20.770 --> 00:33:25.929 Unfortunately does not work like that. The orbiters go around over and over and over 00:33:25.929 --> 00:33:31.220 again and take millions of data points and millions of images and it's up to us to take 00:33:31.220 --> 00:33:35.429 all those images, stitched them together and produce this seamless mosaic similar to what 00:33:35.429 --> 00:33:41.549 you see that provides global geologic context for planetary [Indiscernible]. These are a 00:33:41.549 --> 00:33:45.970 few additional examples of some the work that comes out as a result of taking the raw data 00:33:45.970 --> 00:33:50.240 putting it through your software package and the software package has been open source 00:33:50.240 --> 00:33:54.220 to the community so we are not getting back from the entirety of the world in terms of 00:33:54.220 --> 00:34:00.200 how to produce the best possible spacecraft of software extraction data. You can see a 00:34:00.200 --> 00:34:07.210 variety of examples here of topographic light imaging as well as correcting distortions 00:34:07.210 --> 00:34:12.980 in data but what you see in the center is a lending ellipse that was generated through 00:34:12.980 --> 00:34:17.260 putting together a variety of data sets for the surface of Mars prior to the landing of 00:34:17.260 --> 00:34:23.149 the Mars curiosity Rover and it was our focus to help NASA and JPL to help understand where 00:34:23.149 --> 00:34:27.980 they wanted to go why they wanted to go there and certified the site. Perhaps more poorly 00:34:27.980 --> 00:34:34.659 we are not involved in the next generation of rovers to the surface of Mars the Mars 00:34:34.659 --> 00:34:40.159 2020 Rover which will hopefully be launching in July. What you may not recognize is that 00:34:40.159 --> 00:34:44.320 there is a time difference between Mars and the earth in terms of how it takes the data 00:34:44.320 --> 00:34:49.919 to get here so you can actually have a lot of things that happen as a spacecraft is coming 00:34:49.919 --> 00:34:55.850 down that can be quite devastating and it happens before we even have any time to do 00:34:55.850 --> 00:35:00.390 anything about it so the idea was to come up with an autonomous system such that the 00:35:00.390 --> 00:35:05.670 spacecraft itself can make real-time observations, found out if they is any danger the landing 00:35:05.670 --> 00:35:11.200 ellipse and to actually make real-time adjustments if needed. Our folks worked very closely with 00:35:11.200 --> 00:35:15.540 the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to make sure this autonomous offer was loaded on board 00:35:15.540 --> 00:35:19.490 along with the orbital map data that was loaded onto the spacecraft as well 00:35:19.490 --> 00:35:26.680 that could do real-time comparison. Another thing that I refer to we have done is planetary 00:35:26.680 --> 00:35:33.050 geologic mapping. One of the main things this is a long-standing program and has been happening 00:35:33.050 --> 00:35:37.980 ever since 1963 and continue to do mapping today and it is our goal to the mapping of 00:35:37.980 --> 00:35:42.990 every solid body in the entire solar system. But the one I'm sure you hear is one that 00:35:42.990 --> 00:35:46.400 actually just came out and this is one of the moon and you think haven't we already 00:35:46.400 --> 00:35:51.000 done all the geological mapping we needed to do on the moon? Turns out a lot of the 00:35:51.000 --> 00:35:55.480 geological mapping that was done was done in a regional scale at a variety of different 00:35:55.480 --> 00:36:00.130 scales by different groups using different methods so much so you can actually take to 00:36:00.130 --> 00:36:03.260 the different regions on the moon that had been mapped by different entities put them 00:36:03.260 --> 00:36:09.160 together and they would not allow the different units, different interpretations and it was 00:36:09.160 --> 00:36:13.321 an arduous effort for us to have to go through and make all of those adjustments to make 00:36:13.321 --> 00:36:20.290 sure you can provide one unified seamless geologic map. This is a huge and ever and 00:36:20.290 --> 00:36:24.780 it's meant to be largely impactful to your understanding of the moon but also for potential 00:36:24.780 --> 00:36:30.400 for humans to go to the moon in 2024 using this information. I should also note that 00:36:30.400 --> 00:36:35.190 another thing we do is what we call planetary nomenclature and what that means is take for 00:36:35.190 --> 00:36:39.930 example an impact crater and if you have one person naming it one thing and another person 00:36:39.930 --> 00:36:44.640 any get another thing we have no idea potentially what one is talking about is or what is referred 00:36:44.640 --> 00:36:49.090 to the same thing and calling it different things. So the international astronomical 00:36:49.090 --> 00:36:55.450 Union charted us to maintain an active database of all planetary names so that there is a 00:36:55.450 --> 00:37:00.050 standardized way for everybody to refer to the same things throughout the solar system 00:37:00.050 --> 00:37:05.770 so you have to actually go through a process to get a name for new features that are discovered 00:37:05.770 --> 00:37:11.600 and we help to maintain that selection for new features. One of the things restarted 00:37:11.600 --> 00:37:15.390 over the last couple of years is getting back to one of the things we did early in our history 00:37:15.390 --> 00:37:22.410 wishes to rest or analog studies. For sometime we were super active in primarily planetary 00:37:22.410 --> 00:37:27.600 orbital and robotic lending missions and with the goal of potentially having humans going 00:37:27.600 --> 00:37:33.000 back to the moon as early as 2024 we wanted to make sure that we were as educated as we 00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:37.400 could possibly be about all the various terrestrial analogs throughout the world so we could be 00:37:37.400 --> 00:37:41.470 some of the world experts in helping to train the next generation of astronauts before they 00:37:41.470 --> 00:37:47.860 go to the moon. We also work very closely with other USGS centers including those in 00:37:47.860 --> 00:37:53.230 Hawaii , at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory. I alluded to you earlier that the volcanic 00:37:53.230 --> 00:37:59.120 features on the moon those orange grass beats and the spot that they were produced by feature 00:37:59.120 --> 00:38:03.150 very similar to this so we had folks who went out there and helped take observations of 00:38:03.150 --> 00:38:09.310 this active flow so that they could get a sense of how these were produced and when 00:38:09.310 --> 00:38:19.930 they're found on the planetary surfaces we can infer processes just like this. So again 00:38:19.930 --> 00:38:25.200 we are doing this in anticipation of the next generation of astronauts going to the moon 00:38:25.200 --> 00:38:30.740 by 2024 and this is the class it just graduated and thankfully we were able to work very closely 00:38:30.740 --> 00:38:35.570 with this class over the last year or so as they came out to northern Arizona to work 00:38:35.570 --> 00:38:41.280 with us and our NASA colleagues to start going back to these places that the Apollo astronauts 00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:46.386 went going to the crater into the Grand Canyon and checking out the San Francisco volcanic 00:38:46.386 --> 00:38:52.080 field and being active participants to understand the fundamentals of geology. This is the goal 00:38:52.080 --> 00:38:57.910 that NASA set forth for how we want to try and get to the moon by 2024 and in addition 00:38:57.910 --> 00:39:02.330 to us helping to train the next generation of astronauts we are also going to be involved 00:39:02.330 --> 00:39:06.920 in every single one of these stages that you see here with the ultimate goal of the first, 00:39:06.920 --> 00:39:11.660 getting humans to the moon by 2024 but then as you can see in the upper right corner you 00:39:11.660 --> 00:39:17.840 can see the goal of hopefully trying to get humans to Mars within the next decade. In 00:39:17.840 --> 00:39:21.750 the meantime we want to make sure that we can help take that information and engage 00:39:21.750 --> 00:39:25.230 and inspire the world so we can create the next generation of monetary scientists and 00:39:25.230 --> 00:39:29.600 the next generation of astronauts who want to go and explore some of these questions 00:39:29.600 --> 00:39:33.760 so if you have been to our science center lately we've made a lot of changes to try 00:39:33.760 --> 00:39:38.990 to get people more engaged with the products we make and here we have an example of a topographic 00:39:38.990 --> 00:39:44.840 sandbox that several you may have seen. We have one as well and over on the right we 00:39:44.840 --> 00:39:49.290 have a scale model of asteroid and asteroids are really important as well for a variety 00:39:49.290 --> 00:39:53.520 of reasons. There are new initiatives in terms of understanding them for potential resource 00:39:53.520 --> 00:39:58.640 mining and also for planetary sensory so we want to make sure people understand what these 00:39:58.640 --> 00:40:02.870 things are and what they look like and help engage them and inspire the next generation 00:40:02.870 --> 00:40:08.300 we want to inspire kids locally at the state level and at the country level throughout 00:40:08.300 --> 00:40:13.330 the world and as it's our hope that perhaps you can even inspire children in the galaxy 00:40:13.330 --> 00:40:30.170 far far away. Thank you so much for your attention. 00:40:30.170 --> 00:40:38.160 [Applause] >> The flyers for that are on the back table 00:40:38.160 --> 00:40:44.330 but if you have any questions for Justin. There's a microphone right here please just 00:40:44.330 --> 00:40:51.490 orderly lineup and if you're not able to get up here raise your hand and I can read the 00:40:51.490 --> 00:40:54.650 microphone over to you. 00:40:54.650 --> 00:41:16.900 We have plenty of time for questions. >> Just to get a handle on the size of the database 00:41:16.900 --> 00:41:29.010 that's involved , how many what's the storage size of mosaic like the mosaic of the moon 00:41:29.010 --> 00:41:32.920 you're showing . 00:41:32.920 --> 00:41:37.700 The mosaics themselves tend to be tens of hundreds of gigabytes in some they can be 00:41:37.700 --> 00:41:44.100 as large as terabytes but tens to hundreds of gigabytes and that if you take that many 00:41:44.100 --> 00:41:56.700 start putting them all together that's when you start adding to petabyte size. >> Do you 00:41:56.700 --> 00:42:07.200 communicate to these fellows from other countries and Russian, Canadian and a productive of 00:42:07.200 --> 00:42:08.510 a collaboration you have been. 00:42:08.510 --> 00:42:15.900 That's something we have done as the relatively new director I want to make a more concerted 00:42:15.900 --> 00:42:18.700 effort to make sure we are engaging with our international colleagues. We do work pretty 00:42:18.700 --> 00:42:25.110 regularly with our colleagues in Berlin, and Canadian space agency and throughout the European 00:42:25.110 --> 00:42:30.310 space agency's and even with the Japanese space agency. Those have been hit and miss 00:42:30.310 --> 00:42:35.130 but I would like to make it much more concerted effort to make sure we are all working together 00:42:35.130 --> 00:42:39.270 sharing data in a standardized way so that we have all have access to the same data and 00:42:39.270 --> 00:42:42.750 can work together to make new discoveries. 00:42:42.750 --> 00:42:52.940 What was the most surprising discovery from the samples that the astronauts collected 00:42:52.940 --> 00:42:55.100 on the moon? 00:42:55.100 --> 00:43:02.000 You're asking somebody who's exceptionally biased about that. My own personal bias is 00:43:02.000 --> 00:43:07.210 as you heard in my instruction there is a radioactive trace element called thorium and 00:43:07.210 --> 00:43:13.430 thorium is a heat producing radioactive element that was pretty surprisingly discovered on 00:43:13.430 --> 00:43:15.930 the moon I don't think people thought it was going to be there and it was certainly not 00:43:15.930 --> 00:43:20.210 in any large quantities and it turns out that thorium is one of the key elements to help 00:43:20.210 --> 00:43:24.930 us understand the illusion of the moon and why you have the Celtic volcanism focused 00:43:24.930 --> 00:43:31.430 squarely on this side of the moon so making that the story and combining it with orbital 00:43:31.430 --> 00:43:37.820 observations of very large aerial abundances of thorium across the near side of the moon 00:43:37.820 --> 00:43:42.980 was one of the major discoveries. But there is you discoveries made all the time again 00:43:42.980 --> 00:43:49.410 water was one of them that was never expected. There is a right of other things. There are 00:43:49.410 --> 00:43:55.260 some organics that have been discovered as well now that we are able to the text abundances 00:43:55.260 --> 00:44:00.010 a really small small levels that were not expected that may have been from impacts from 00:44:00.010 --> 00:44:06.020 organic meteorite so there's a lot of the scar is actually that have been made or lost 00:44:06.020 --> 00:44:09.830 the reason we continue to make more and more. People think that we have been there done 00:44:09.830 --> 00:44:16.770 that but because of new technologies that can be applied we are making new discoveries 00:44:16.770 --> 00:44:18.340 all the time. 00:44:18.340 --> 00:44:24.300 Maybe a follow-up question to the collaboration question. Is it true that China is going to 00:44:24.300 --> 00:44:27.900 be exploring the moon actively soon? 00:44:27.900 --> 00:44:31.810 They are, actually. 00:44:31.810 --> 00:44:33.720 Will be be collaborating on their side of the moon? 00:44:33.720 --> 00:44:39.350 It is a little difficult right now is a little bit difficult for us to work with China as 00:44:39.350 --> 00:44:45.360 a federal government agency but there are other entities, space ask for example working 00:44:45.360 --> 00:44:51.550 with the Chinese government to some extent so it is the idealized version would be yes 00:44:51.550 --> 00:44:55.680 all of us would work together it is a little bit difficult right now though. But yes, they 00:44:55.680 --> 00:45:02.990 do have active rovers in orbit right now. >> Thank you for coming out in for the talk. 00:45:02.990 --> 00:45:08.840 It was quite good. Can you elaborate more on distribution of the thorium and is it in 00:45:08.840 --> 00:45:15.990 fact distributed because the moon was tightly locked or other -- I'm just wondering more 00:45:15.990 --> 00:45:17.120 about the relationship. 00:45:17.120 --> 00:45:22.570 I might have to talk to you about this off-line because I can go on for hours but I will tell 00:45:22.570 --> 00:45:31.360 you that the model at least as we thought was that thorium used to be globally distributed 00:45:31.360 --> 00:45:36.110 and it was caught between the thick layer of the cross and the mantle and this really 00:45:36.110 --> 00:45:40.730 thin layer of heat producing elements basically thorium, uranium and other heat producing 00:45:40.730 --> 00:45:48.220 elements. There was a giant in fact called South Pole Aitken basin and it was a glancing 00:45:48.220 --> 00:45:53.390 blow and only an impact that size would have completely destroyed the moon but in this 00:45:53.390 --> 00:45:59.450 instance because it was a glancing blow the ideas that it took this material full of thorium 00:45:59.450 --> 00:46:06.120 and concentrated it to the impact on the near side and that material then got transmitted 00:46:06.120 --> 00:46:11.520 to the interior of the moon the mantle down below and all of it was concentrated right 00:46:11.520 --> 00:46:16.880 below the near side of the moon where the decay of the thorium went to the heat producing 00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:21.410 to the production of heat nothing of the mental irruption of the volcanism only on the near 00:46:21.410 --> 00:46:29.230 side of the moon. That's the quick summary but I'm happy to talk more about it afterwards. 00:46:29.230 --> 00:46:36.130 Are there any uses of AI in your tools and technology for some Voyager 00:46:36.130 --> 00:46:45.081 lending suffer right obstacle avoidance and also navigation on the penitentiary. >> We 00:46:45.081 --> 00:46:49.080 are always exploring new technologies and techniques and we are involving artificial 00:46:49.080 --> 00:46:56.741 intelligence and machine learning technologies that were using to investigate the planetary 00:46:56.741 --> 00:47:00.930 surfaces that reminds me that we are also investigating the use of augmented reality 00:47:00.930 --> 00:47:05.270 and virtual reality as well particularly in the training of the astronauts and as they 00:47:05.270 --> 00:47:14.470 come out, we're going to be experimenting with the use of AR as you move forward. >> Did 00:47:14.470 --> 00:47:21.730 I hear correctly that some of the sealed lunar samples in Houston have been opened or will 00:47:21.730 --> 00:47:23.920 be opened or have been opened? 00:47:23.920 --> 00:47:29.040 Yes. The ones you are referring to was one of the drive tubes from Apollo 16 00:47:29.040 --> 00:47:32.140 so the astronauts when they went there instead of drilling they took a two and they were 00:47:32.140 --> 00:47:39.040 able to hammer down and seal it for posterity effectively and bring it back and it had been 00:47:39.040 --> 00:47:43.930 since the 60s that that drive drive to was closed and sealed and it was recently opened 00:47:43.930 --> 00:47:50.240 within this last year and a of my PhD advisor is actually one of the persons involved in 00:47:50.240 --> 00:47:54.250 this sample analyzing so I'm inspecting to see some really fascinating discoveries to 00:47:54.250 --> 00:47:55.530 come out of that. 00:47:55.530 --> 00:47:58.840 So the research is certainly not complete yet? 00:47:58.840 --> 00:48:00.300 Correct. 00:48:00.300 --> 00:48:06.860 Was the intent to preserve this for modern technique or for new generations? 00:48:06.860 --> 00:48:11.480 Exactly. And to make comparisons over time see how things may have changed. One of the 00:48:11.480 --> 00:48:14.781 really interesting thing is that people are interested in is a concept known as the space 00:48:14.781 --> 00:48:21.480 weathering. The hope is that with the drive tube you're going to retain kind of that stratigraphy 00:48:21.480 --> 00:48:28.510 of the concept you see what the space weathering affected the uppermost parts of the drive 00:48:28.510 --> 00:48:33.280 tube as opposed to something down lower so that's why to be something that had not been 00:48:33.280 --> 00:48:37.550 identified at that time. There is any process that people are really exceptionally interested 00:48:37.550 --> 00:48:41.580 in that can now be investigated with that concept in mind but yes you technologies as 00:48:41.580 --> 00:48:54.360 well. >> Earlier you touched a little bit about the imagery that comes from your department. 00:48:54.360 --> 00:49:00.100 How much is it that your group does is everything that I see here the pictures I see in the 00:49:00.100 --> 00:49:05.050 news and the media the ones that look amazing is that from your group or is that from a 00:49:05.050 --> 00:49:09.020 different group and can you talk a little bit about how long it takes to put those together 00:49:09.020 --> 00:49:15.160 and how realistic they are? The colors are amazing and thinking about the colors, there's 00:49:15.160 --> 00:49:16.260 another real colors. 00:49:16.260 --> 00:49:21.800 A lot of great questions. In general, we work with a lot of different entities all that 00:49:21.800 --> 00:49:25.610 the planetary science community to generate those but yes, in a lot of instances we are 00:49:25.610 --> 00:49:30.460 responsible for some of the things you see particularly those large global mosaics. Those 00:49:30.460 --> 00:49:35.120 do take an immense amount of time . Like I said there's millions of data points and it 00:49:35.120 --> 00:49:43.000 takes our supercomputing clusters it takes are educated dedicated staff and the army 00:49:43.000 --> 00:49:47.030 of students to go through and process all of this information to make sure it aligns 00:49:47.030 --> 00:49:54.260 perfectly and happens in fits and starts and can happen over years. The colors you actually 00:49:54.260 --> 00:50:01.070 saw our real colors but many instances are the ones you see will be filters that are 00:50:01.070 --> 00:50:06.200 used by instruments to look at different wavelengths that will tell us about the compositions of 00:50:06.200 --> 00:50:10.760 different materials when you look at them through a different filter or lens. You always 00:50:10.760 --> 00:50:15.290 want to be a little bit aware so for example one of the things we recently generated is 00:50:15.290 --> 00:50:20.350 a topographic map of the moon that we actually converted to a rock in the putdown in our 00:50:20.350 --> 00:50:26.260 education and outreach center for kids to come out and walk on. It is in blues and greens. 00:50:26.260 --> 00:50:31.461 Is a color ramp that we chose to better represent the differences in topography and the question 00:50:31.461 --> 00:50:37.450 we get all the time well, we did not realize Mars was green. Why is that? It gives us the 00:50:37.450 --> 00:50:42.260 opportunity why you have that difference in color skills because they will tell you slightly 00:50:42.260 --> 00:50:46.050 different things and bring things out in a way that you may not have expected if you 00:50:46.050 --> 00:51:02.460 are looking at visible light only. Did that answer your question? Yeah. >> Is any of your 00:51:02.460 --> 00:51:12.950 groups work include establishing colonies on the moon for extended stays and if so, 00:51:12.950 --> 00:51:22.870 does it include energy production and if so, thorium have anything to do with that? 00:51:22.870 --> 00:51:29.390 I'm so happy their survey questions about thorium. To answer the first question in terms 00:51:29.390 --> 00:51:33.970 of actually building anything or having an actual colony building partner not so much 00:51:33.970 --> 00:51:38.430 involved in but the second part of your question terms of energy resources we are getting more 00:51:38.430 --> 00:51:43.200 involved in. You may be familiar with the fact that the USGS here is responsible for 00:51:43.200 --> 00:51:49.740 finding a lot of energy deposits and resources so why not take that expertise in applied 00:51:49.740 --> 00:51:54.360 to understanding another planetary surface so we are actually currently involved in several 00:51:54.360 --> 00:51:59.630 different initiatives to explore resources on the moon as well as resources on things 00:51:59.630 --> 00:52:05.053 like asteroids. Thorium while it is largely disseminated across the near side of the moon 00:52:05.053 --> 00:52:09.570 and concentrated in such a way that it would look like it will be useful it is not in such 00:52:09.570 --> 00:52:14.540 large abundances that would make a primary resource unfortunately but that's why we are 00:52:14.540 --> 00:52:19.990 exporting things like solar illumination, trying to find areas where for example there 00:52:19.990 --> 00:52:25.650 is permanent exposure to light all the time. On the moon there's areas of permanent light 00:52:25.650 --> 00:52:30.340 and eras of permanent shadow in both of those are interesting from an energy resource perspective 00:52:30.340 --> 00:52:36.170 one because permanent light you can use solar panels in one from the permanent dark is eras 00:52:36.170 --> 00:52:41.430 where we think there might be large concentrations of water ice and that's one of the goals ideally 00:52:41.430 --> 00:52:46.290 of the Artemis mission to go to the South Pole and help determine whether or not these 00:52:46.290 --> 00:52:51.440 concentrations of water ice are really water ice or not. The observations we are getting 00:52:51.440 --> 00:52:54.940 our telling us two different things. One is thing it could be large concentrations of 00:52:54.940 --> 00:53:02.190 water ice and other suggested could be solar wind and planted hydrogen that looks to remote-sensing 00:53:02.190 --> 00:53:06.940 data like water and hydrogen so it will be really important for us to go up there to 00:53:06.940 --> 00:53:11.210 find out if these are actually real ice deposit because if they are they can be utilized for 00:53:11.210 --> 00:53:12.400 future colonization. 00:53:12.400 --> 00:53:22.050 I'm sure you know about the HBO series from the earth to the moon in a particular episode 00:53:22.050 --> 00:53:27.930 where they talk about the astral geology astrogeology which is one of my favorite episodes but as 00:53:27.930 --> 00:53:36.830 I learned tonight they totally shortchange Dr. Shoemaker it appears because I think they 00:53:36.830 --> 00:53:45.450 mention MIT or Caltech some Dr. silver which I'm sure was a good fellow who did good work 00:53:45.450 --> 00:53:51.340 but they did not mention Shoemaker at all as I recall and I'm just curious maybe 40 00:53:51.340 --> 00:53:55.770 off-color comments you think you got shortchanged in that episode? 00:53:55.770 --> 00:54:04.350 I will certainly admit I am biased and even though I never got opportunity to get to know 00:54:04.350 --> 00:54:09.090 Jean he was exceptionally influential in a lot of the levels but he was not the only 00:54:09.090 --> 00:54:13.930 one there were people like others and people that were in involved in all stages and they 00:54:13.930 --> 00:54:19.490 work together as a team I'm sure they butted heads and they had a strong opinion some more 00:54:19.490 --> 00:54:25.240 prominent than others because they were willing to be at the front of the crowd but I would 00:54:25.240 --> 00:54:29.170 say that it would have been nice to see a little bit more about Jean but it really was 00:54:29.170 --> 00:54:34.480 a team of people who did all that work so it's fair that the information they provided 00:54:34.480 --> 00:54:41.450 would've been nice to see a little bit more about that. >> 00:54:41.450 --> 00:54:49.120 While we still have you on the horn so to speak of your perspective as a science director, 00:54:49.120 --> 00:54:57.700 what would you give in terms of your advice for geologists who are now selecting a program 00:54:57.700 --> 00:54:58.870 of study. 00:54:58.870 --> 00:55:05.960 The thing we find most often when we are trying to inspire and engage next-generation there's 00:55:05.960 --> 00:55:12.580 this concept of planetary science is this unique singular thing that is only made for 00:55:12.580 --> 00:55:17.310 a few people to do and as I try to allude to in that one diagram planetary science is 00:55:17.310 --> 00:55:23.600 this amalgamation of a white righty of expertise and skill sets and it will be to let people 00:55:23.600 --> 00:55:29.300 know that any skill that you have as long as he wanted with passionately can be brought 00:55:29.300 --> 00:55:34.490 to bear in terms of being part of our team to help make some new discovery so you have 00:55:34.490 --> 00:55:39.980 to be a geologist or you don't have to be just a computer scientist you can be a variety 00:55:39.980 --> 00:55:47.450 of things to help become part of our team. 00:55:47.450 --> 00:55:55.773 Please join me in giving him another round of applause. Thank you, Justin. 00:55:55.773 --> 00:55:56.773 [Applause] 00:55:56.773 --> 00:56:09.970 Thank you all for joining us tonight and drive safe home and see you next month. 00:56:09.970 --> 00:56:29.200 [Event concluded]