Possible biomarkers: Perseverance rocks the Tenth International Conference on Mars

Sarah Al-Ahmed: An intriguing sample of rocks at the Tenth International Conference on Mars. This week on Planetary Radio. I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of The Planetary Society with more of the human adventure across our Solar System and beyond. All right, everyone. Let's not jump to conclusions, but NASA's Perseverance Rover has collected a sample on Mars that has the whole Martian scientific community buzzing. The rock sample, which is nicknamed Cheyava Falls shows indications that it may have hosted microbial life billions of years ago. As with all extraordinary claims, we need some extraordinary science to back it up. But how cool is that? This week we'll visit the Tenth International Conference on Mars where this finding was announced. You'll hear from many excellent Martian scientists including Meenakshi Wadhwa and Brandi Carrier, the principal scientist and lead sample integrity scientist from Mars Sample Return at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. You'll also hear from Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist from Caltech. Of course, this conference comes on the heels of a major announcement in lunar exploration, the cancellation of NASA's VIPER rover mission to the moon. Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations, will explain what happened and why it matters. Before we go, we'll turn to Bruce Betts, the chief scientist of The Planetary Society for What's Up? I'll ask him why organic compounds like the ones that were found in the Cheyava Falls sample are less prevalent on the surface of Mars than you might think. If you love Planetary Radio and want to stay informed about the latest space discoveries, make sure you hit that subscribe button on your favorite podcasting platform. By subscribing, you'll never miss an episode filled with new and awe-inspiring ways to know the cosmos and our place within it. The Tenth International Conference on Mars was held from July 22nd to 25th at Caltech in Pasadena, California right down the road from our headquarters. That's just one of the many benefits of living in the city of astronomy. The conference circuit is excellent. It's been almost 60 years since we got our first closeup peak at Mars with the Mariner 4 flyby, and in the past two decades, humanity has had a continuous presence on and around the red planet. That's a lot of science to digest. So every few years Mars scientists and engineers from all over the world come together for the International Conference on Mars. They share their findings and talk strategy about the next era of Mars exploration. While I was at the conference, I ran into many of our previous guests on the show, some of which you'll hear from in this episode. I also met representatives from Mars Missions from all over our planet. The Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency was there along with United Arab Emirates Space Agency, the Indian Space Research Organization, the European Space Agency, the China National Space Administration, and the USA's National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I might've missed a few because there were so many people there. There's so much going on with science at the Red Planet and the vast community of Mars scientists is gearing up for the next big move to help us understand our neighboring world, the Mars Sample Return Program or MSR. It's a series of missions by NASA and the European Space Agency to return samples from the Martian surface to Earth for the first time ever. Here's Dr. Jim Bell, principal investigator for NASA's Perseverance Rover Mastcam-Z instruments and professor at the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University. I always love bumping into Jim at events. Well, I'm here with Jim Bell, the previous president of The Planetary Society's board of directors. Lovely to bump into you again in person.

Jim Bell: All right, great. Great to see Plan Rad on the premises here at Red Planet.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So what has this conference been like for you over the past few days?

Jim Bell: It is very cool. It's not an annual conference. It's only every so often, every four or five years. This is the Tenth International Conference on Mars. I think I started my career at the fourth back in the '80s. There's a bunch of people here who were at that meeting and an enormous number of people here who are brand new in the community. So it's just great to see more than 500 people from around the world who are just Mars, Mars, Mars. It's awesome.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, I mean, all of these people are so deeply into the research that's going on with Mars, but being here in person I think really presents some interesting opportunities. What do you think people really get out of coming to conferences like this?

Jim Bell: It's just like any other aspect of people who go to meetings and conferences and workshops. It's a lot of networking that happens here. There's a lot, of course, catching up with old friends, meeting new colleagues in person for the first time. It's maybe a little cliche, but you get together around the water cooler and you just trade a lot more information than in an email or even a phone call or a Zoom call. So lots of collaborations are being reinforced, are being developed, ideas. People get together for lunch or beverages after the conference and this is just fertile ground for new papers, new studies, new missions, new instruments. It's just great to get everybody together.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Have there been any presentations or posters that have really stood out to you over the last few days that really excited you?

Jim Bell: Oh, well, with the presentation we heard this morning from project scientist Ken Farley on Mars 2020 about the detection of organic signals in one of our very recent samples, this is very exciting. We've known for a long time. The community is known for a long time that there are organics on Mars. This is a very strong signal and we don't know exactly what it is and it's early days, but there's a buzz now going around about that. I'm also super excited about seeing the big representation by the international community here, the UAE. The ESA folks are here, representatives of the Indian mission, representatives from other countries around the world that have ideas for future missions and participation in NASA and ESA mission. So it's not just NASA, it's really global this conference.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's wonderful having a planet as a case study for what happens when you get that many international missions all being able to coordinate together. It's really wonderful to see, and I think that's even all the more reason why we need to be having these kinds of conferences. Let people see each other in person and really interact without having that time zone difference.

Jim Bell: Absolutely, and this is the first one of these since COVID, of course. So everybody I think is still getting back into the "let's get together" mode, so it's just wonderful to see old colleagues and make lots of new ones.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, here's hope and I bump into you at the next conference.

Jim Bell: Let's do it. Absolutely.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much, Jim.

Jim Bell: All right. Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We had only just heard the presentation on the newest and intriguing sample from NASA's Perseverance rover, which is collecting rocks for the Mars Sample Return program. The rock that everyone is so excited about is nicknamed Cheyava Falls. It's the rover's 22nd core sample, which was collected just recently on July 21st on the northern edge of Neretva Vallis, an ancient river valley on Mars that was carved by water rushing into Jezero Crater. To explain why the sample is so exciting, here's a short that was created by NASA featuring Dr. Morgan Cable, a scientist on the Perseverance team.

Morgan Cable: What does this rock have to do with our search for ancient life on Mars? Everything. I'm Morgan Cable, a scientist on NASA's Perseverance rover teams. Let's take a closer look. Three things about this rock jump out at us. These whitish veins of calcium sulfate are clear evidence that water once ran through the rock. In this reddish middle area, the rover's SHERLOC instrument detected organic compounds and these tiny features that look like leopard spots. Pixel found they indicate chemical reactions, which could have been an energy source for microbial life. We've never seen these three things together on Mars before. We have lots of questions about how this rock formed and whether it hosted microbial life billions of years ago. But to fully understand what's going on here, we need to get these rocks back to labs here on Earth. In the meantime, as a science community investigates this data, we've added a sample of this really compelling rock to Perseverance's collection. It's awaiting retrieval by future mission and we can't wait to study it up close.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: The presentation about this amazing rock sample and all of the other things cached by Perseverance was given by Dr. Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist from Caltech. I had a chance to speak with him shortly after he dropped the mic on this conference.

Ken Farley: I'm Ken Farley. I'm a project scientist for Perseverance and I'm a professor at Caltech.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: You gave a wonderful presentation earlier about the samples that we've returned from the rover that we hope to bring home to Earth. But what was particularly interesting to me were some of the more recent samples that we've collected that have really piqued your interest. Could you talk a little bit about that?

Ken Farley: Yeah. Just over the last few weeks, we have been studying an area that we hadn't been before and we discovered a rock that had really, really interesting and potentially important features that I think are essential for bringing back to Earth.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Something you pointed out is that a big motivator behind bringing these samples back, it's not just the scientific understanding of the history of Mars, but the potential for understanding its habitability in the past. How would we begin to discern whether or not one of these samples showed evidence of life?

Ken Farley: What we find really interesting about this rock is it actually has characteristics that both suggest it is a habitable environment in the sense that there's pretty clear evidence that this rock interacted with water, may have even been deposited in water in a lake. It also has organic matter in it. Very likely has organic matter in it, the building blocks of life, and it has clear evidence for redox reactions which provide energy for life. So this has all three of those characteristics that are very interesting from a habitability point of view. Now, it's also true that those features on Earth, the likely presence of organic matter in redox reactions, they are very often associated with life on Earth. And so from that point of view, these features also constitute a potential bio signature. And to be clear, a potential bio signature is something that might've been produced by life, but we need to study it more to be sure.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, currently there's a cache of samples sitting on the surface of Mars and the rest of the samples are inside of the Perseverance rover. How many samples we still have left to collect and what are your hopes for the future of Mars Sample Return?

Ken Farley: Yeah. We have 41 total sample tubes and we've expended all but 11 tubes for which we can collect rocks. Over the course of the rest of the mission, we will expend those tubes, but it is getting harder and harder to decide which rocks we should pick up. Nevertheless, the rock that we just collected, I think everybody that looked at it said, "Yes, this one must go in the collection." It's entirely different than anything we've seen before. It's a potentially very informative rock. It's also a quite complicated rock. It's just the kind of thing that we would want to have on Earth. So as we go forward, we're going to be continuing to look for rocks in this same general area that are exciting, and then we're going to start moving up the crater rim into rocks that are potentially much older, potentially half a billion years older and formed in completely different ways than what we've seen over the first three and a half years of the mission.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How are you going to determine the path up out of that crater rim? Because there are so many different ways that we could get to the samples that we want.

Ken Farley: Determining the path that the Perseverance rover takes is an iterative process between the scientists who use these fabulous orbiter images that have been acquired over the decades. We identify interesting scientific targets, we put them on a map, and then we have the rover planters, the people that actually decide the route that the rover is going to drive, identify pathways that connect those. We have been incredibly fortunate in that the topography of Jezero Crater is such that we can actually drive up the rim. We don't see any special hazards in doing that, and so we've really been able to identify essentially all the targets that we are interested in. The rover planners have found a way to get there.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, I know that Mars Sample Return is very important to you, but also the broader scientific community and at The Planetary Society, we are committed to trying to make sure that we advocate for this mission as much as possible because I believe that those samples will not only help people who are deeply interested in Mars but could help us in the broader context of not only understanding our planet, but the exoplanets beyond.

Ken Farley: Yeah. I think the beautiful thing about Mars is it contains a rich geologic history of a time period, which does not exist in the rock record anywhere else, even on Earth. We are looking at rocks in Jezero Crater that are older than about three and a half billion years. This is a unique snapshot of the processes that were occurring early in the history of the Solar System. This is really important not just for understanding how a rocky planet potentially like Earth at this stage, how it evolved, how its climate works and how it's climate change, but also it records aspects of the early history of the Solar System as well. That's what we can get out of these rocks if we can get them back to Earth.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, good luck at all the future sampling. I loved the slide that you showed with all of the different samples so far. I'd love to get my hands on that so I could show it to other people, but now we're going to add even more to that story. And one of these days we're going to bring those samples home and it is going to be one of the greatest achievements in scientific history. So thank you so much.

Ken Farley: Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: One of the people that I was really excited to finally meet in person was Dr. Meenakshi Wadhwa or Mini. She's principal scientist from Mars Sample Return at NASA's Jet Propulsion laboratory. Her childhood in northern India investigating the rocks under the Himalayas led her on a lifelong journey to study rocks from other worlds. All right. We're here with Mini Wadhwa, who we've spoken with on Planetary Radio before when we were first introducing what MSR was going to do for the future of Martian exploration. It's wonderful to meet you in person.

Meenakshi Wadhwa: Great to see you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What has your experience at the conference been like over the last few days?

Meenakshi Wadhwa: Well, it's been really wonderful to see all of my colleagues here in person. A lot of them, obviously, I haven't seen in a few years because the pandemic, but the science march is on and lots of exciting results and lots of exciting data to talk about. And of course there was this really exciting MSR Mars Sample Return session this morning, which it was really wonderful to hear all the new data and the new samples that we are collecting that are going to really, I think, change a lot about what we know about Mars and about habitability and about how rocky planets become habitable.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Yeah. It's really wonderful seeing just the breadth of the different samples you've collected. And now knowing that we're going to be moving up out of the crater into new territory and being able to compare between them, what could that tell us about not just Jezero Crater but the history of Mars?

Meenakshi Wadhwa: It's going to be really important I think to actually start to investigate some of these rocks and samples, and environments that are fundamentally really different from the ones that we've encountered so far within Jezero Crater. So all of the things that we've encountered so far in Jezero Crater, they are younger than the terrain around surrounding the ancient terrains that date back two older than about 4 billion years, we think. And so, obviously, we wanted to go into Jezero Crater to sample some of the delta sediments, to sample some of the rivering sediments, the lake sediments, things that we think, environments that we think are going to give us the best chance to find evidence of ancient life. But really the planetary context of that is super important to understand as well. And so going beyond the rim or to the rim really what that gives us is going to rocks that are older that record the early planetary evolution on Mars. And that's something that obviously we haven't been able to sample so far within Jezero Crater. So we are looking at somewhat younger materials there. And so that as well as some of the things that we're going to find in terms of interaction with water and those kinds of rocks, I mean, we're going to be sampling other distinct habitable environments that we haven't seen yet within Jezero Crater. And so I think it's going to give us, again, add to the diversity of samples that we're going to have and diversity of environments that we're going to be looking at. And so it's going to be really, really exciting.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's really difficult to figure out what to sample now that we're getting closer to the end of our sample tubes. And there's also this existing debate about whether or not we should be prioritizing bringing back sample tubes that have Martian atmosphere or air inside of them. What do you feel about that?

Meenakshi Wadhwa: So we are collecting the most diverse sample suite that we can get among.... I think the plan is of course that we try to get as many tubes as possible up to 30. And of those, of course, rocks, regolith materials, atmosphere, all of these samples are going to be important and they're going to tell us something different and something unique about Mars as well as beyond Mars, about Solar System history and formation, planet formation processes. But the atmosphere, we have one sample tube that's a dedicated atmosphere tube and that is deposited at the Three Forks depot. That is not our primary cache that we're going to be going after. Our desirement is to be able to get the samples that are onboard the rover at the current time. And there we've got these amazing cores, rock cores, and regular cores that have headspace, that have atmosphere. But I can see that there's obviously interest in getting some dedicated atmospheric sample. I want to mention we have these witness tubes as well, by the way, and two thirds of those tubes are actually atmosphere. So there are these getter materials in these witness tubes that are going to tell us something about the contamination environment that the rover is seeing. But most of that tube is filled with atmosphere. And so the sampling of the atmosphere is something to get a second tube. For example, that's something that's going to have to be determined and discussed by the Mars 2020 team. I think that's something that could happen as well, but it's not something that I know for a fact it is going to happen. It's going to depend on what kind of rocks we encounter, whether there's something super exciting that we really want to sample. Especially as we get towards the end of the collection of tubes and strategies on how to best maximize the science. I mean, it's going to have to be a broader discussion that happens with the science team and the science community. I mean, all of these samples are important and atmospheric sample certainly is also important. We have some of it already.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: How are you feeling about the future of Mars Sample Return?

Meenakshi Wadhwa: I'm optimistic. I'm optimistic. I mean, right now we've got these studies that are happening, 10 different studies that involve the industry as well as NASA centers. There's going to be some good ideas there. I think there's options that would allow us to do things more efficiently, perhaps efficiently in terms of schedule, efficiently in terms of cost. I'm excited to hear about what those might be and I'm excited to have a clear path forward for MSR hopefully by early next year. And that's obviously what I'm hoping for and I'm optimistic we'll get there.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Definitely something to look forward to in the future. Thank you so much, Mini.

Meenakshi Wadhwa: Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's really impressive that these samples could help us better understand Mars's history and potential for habitability. Still one of the most mind-bending challenges in the history of planetary protection. It's one thing to protect other worlds from us, but how do we protect Earth from potential life that could still be trapped in samples that we bring back home from Mars? I want to underscore that it's super unlikely that we have living microbes in those samples, but you can never be too careful with things like this. Here's Dr. Brandi Carrier, lead sample integrity scientist from Mars Sample Return at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Brandi Carrier: I'm Dr. Brandi Carrier. I'm at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and I'm the deputy project scientist for the Mars Sample Receiving Project.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So we've heard a lot today about people's aspirations bringing these samples back here to Earth. It's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of hope to do it, but once we actually get these samples back, there is so much complexity to how we treat them. What are the biggest concerns bringing back material from another world that could potentially harbor life?

Brandi Carrier: So what makes Mars Sample Return different than previous sample return missions that have been undertaken aside from Apollo is the view that Mars could potentially harbor extent that is modern life. And because of that, NASA and ESA have to take a really cautious approach. The general consensus of the science community is that the likelihood that there is living organisms in the Jezero samples or the near Jezero samples is extremely, extremely low. But if there's even a slight chance that there's an organism that could pose a hazard to Earth. We need to be really, really careful. So the samples, once they land, will have to reside under biocontainment until they are deemed to be free of biohazards or they are fully sterilized.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And this is kind of the first time we've ever really had to think seriously about planetary protection in this direction. We've worried about it with other worlds. Cassini, for example, had to burn up in the atmosphere to protect worlds like Enceladus, but we don't really worry about it with things like the Osiris-Rex Bennu samples. Why is that?

Brandi Carrier: It's based on the evaluation of the likelihood of the body that we're returning samples from being habitable in the modern sense. So for asteroids and comets, they have no atmosphere. They have no possibility of surface water. They are baked all the time by high intensity radiation, and there's no real credible hypothesis that there are living organisms on the surface of those bodies from where we're collecting samples. Whereas Mars, one of the main reasons we love Mars and we explore Mars is that we think there is a chance that life developed there and may still exist in some environments. But those environments are not the surface where we're collecting the Jezero samples that we want to return. When we talk about looking for extent life on Mars. We're talking about deep underground in kilometers deep liquid water if it exists or in ice deposits. None of these really habitable and currently habitable environments exist where we're taking samples with Mars 2020. But because we believe there's a chance life could have developed in the ancient past and we don't know what life looks like on another planet, we can't say for sure that there is no type of organism that could be living in those samples. We also can't say to a hundred percent certainty that whatever potential organism that is would not be capable of interacting with Earth biology. And this is the guiding principle toward just being really conservative and being really careful. This is a risk, even though it's an extremely small risk, it's a risk no one would want to take independent of how amazing the science we're going to do is. So we're going to bring the samples back, hopefully. We're going to do it safely. We're going to make sure that there's no possible hazards present and we're going to do all the science that we've been hoping to do for the last 40 years.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, better safe than sorry, right?

Brandi Carrier: It's an easy way to say it.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But this is also one of those situations where the United States in concert with our international partners is bringing this material back not just for the betterment of NASA and the United States space programs, but for people all around the world who want to do this science and for future generations. How do you balance the fact that you're going to probably need to keep this in some kind of really hardcore containment situation with the fact that people in other locations are going to want to get their hands on these samples?

Brandi Carrier: So notionally, and we're still very much in a pre-planning stage for the sample receiving facility, but notionally, it would be jointly managed by NASA and ESA, but in all likelihood, the people who physically work in that facility will be trained technicians who have been trained to work in a biosafety type of environment. What they do with the samples in terms of introducing them to the instruments that are present and so on and so forth, will be guided by the international science community. So the scientists will be selected, they will make the analysis plans, but those plans inside the facility will likely be carried out by technicians. And that's how you get around the safety aspect. It's quite an arduous undertaking to get certified to work in those kind of labs. You can look, for example, CDC have labs like this. It takes years of training. Not every scientist is going to have the opportunity to do that, and that's probably for the best, takes a lot of time and a lot of effort. So the actual analysis that are carried out on the samples will be planned by the international science community and that will be open to scientists from every country in the world and they will be selected based on merit and not on location. And whoever is selected will become part of the science team and will have equal weight in deciding what's done with the samples. Now, once the samples are deemed to be safe or are able to be released because they're sterilized, all the further science will happen also in labs anywhere in the world. So that is, again, independent of location. Although NASA and ESA are currently the main sponsors of Mars Sample Return, there is no desire to limit the access of the international science community to scientists only in the United States or in Europe.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Which is wonderful because this, when it happens is going to be one of the biggest moments in exploration scientific discovery that has ever happened in the history of the world. This is a benefit for all of humanity and I'm glad that a lot of people are going to be able to get their hands on it. But how do you even begin to design a lab like this? It sounds like you're in the middle of trying to decide what kind of instruments are going to go in there, what kind of experiments you can do on site. What is that process like?

Brandi Carrier: So it's a very iterative process. I mean, clearly we know how biosafety labs need to operate. There are many of them in existence all around the world. They have very, very stringent requirements on maintaining what we call a bio barrier where nothing biological can get out. The main difference between that and a sample receiving facility for these samples is that we also need to keep the samples clean. So not only do we need to keep material from the samples from getting out of the facility, but we also want to keep contamination from getting in, which is what adds this extra layer of difficulty and what makes it potentially less than ideal to retrofit an existing lab. The other difference is the amount of analysis we feel that we may need to do. So we've been working on what is the minimum number of instruments we would need to put in this lab just to be able to carry out the sample safety assessment, to be able to characterize the sample so that small pieces of them can be allocated out to the correct scientific analysis? All those instruments require floor space. They require infrastructure. Most existing labs have a smaller footprint and couldn't necessarily host the amount of space we would need for all of the analysis we want to do in addition to all the infrastructure we would need to limit contamination. And so there's several modalities that are under consideration. There's using retrofitted existing facilities, building new buildings. There's also the potential for these modular facilities where there are some manufacturers making these kind of self-contained modules that you can get as many as you need, hook them together. But there's also the possibility for partnerships. Aside from the current partnership between NASA and ESA, there's the potential for cooperation with universities or state governments that are already planning to build buildings like this and may want to go into an agreement with NASA and ESA. So we're really still in the very early planning phases of this. There are many different options. Of course, we're interested in limiting size and cost. For the science community, most people would prefer to do as many investigations as possible in their own labs where they have an instrument that they've specially calibrated and specially designed to do exactly what they want to do. So right now what we're working at is scoping. So how much space, how many instruments really are the bare minimum so that those can feed forward into the next set of studies that kind of look at what's the best way to engineer this facility?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There is so much going on with this, but when it happens, man, this is going to be cool. I cannot wait and I'm so happy not just for our generation, but for everyone who comes after. This is going to give us context, not just about life in the universe, but also the evolution of our Solar System. There is so much here and this is such important science.

Brandi Carrier: Yeah. I mean, I couldn't agree more. It's really exciting. It's really going to be inspirational for future exploration. It's going to tell us more about our own Solar System, but potentially exoplanets, our own planet as well. Mars and Earth are a lot alike, and that's one of the reasons that we continue to look to Mars to answer these questions. When we are eventually able to do Mars Sample Return, it's going to open all new doors to scientific inquiry and discovery for generations to come.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thank you so much, Brandi.

Brandi Carrier: Thank you.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: During the breaks between presentations, there were poster sessions that were given by students and professionals sharing their findings about Mars. I wish I had time in this show to share all of the recordings I got with the poster presenters because it's fascinating stuff. From the Aphelion Cloud Belt to the Aurora and ices on Mars. One of the people I spoke with was Katya Yanez, a Planetary Radio listener studying how Mars analogs on Earth can help us learn more about Mars's water history.

Katya Yanez: My name is Katya Yanez. I'm from Brown University. I'm a first year student there. And I'm doing a project with the Mars analog. We're trying to estimate the capabilities and limitations of some instrumentations that are very martian relevant such as micro probe and the pixel, which Stony Brook University has a breadboard version of it. So we're just trying to figure out how with this remote sensing tools, we can tell by looking at sandstones and other products on Mars remotely, how we can tell the history of [inaudible 00:30:17] alteration and this basaltic sandstone. So our Mars analog is a basaltic sandstone that was altered and it has a lot of secondary products, so it's a very interesting analog to look at. Until we get those samples back, this is the best thing that we could do. And we do have some tools that can do that. So once we get all those datas or the data that we're getting, we need to be able to understand to what level we can tell that water history.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: But just imagine a future where we get those samples back, where we get to slice these things up, actually do the analysis that we want. What are you most excited to learn? Is it about the water history of Mars specifically?

Katya Yanez: Well, there is a lot of implications, especially with this. We call them alteration products and it's like really? What does that mean? It is the potential to have organics within this to shield those organics. So it is really an astrobiology question to be able... This is why NASA has this follow the water. It's because you need to know what happened with that water. And it's really the story of us. We think of Mars as a very alien, it's out of this world, but it's really like if these happen on Earth, which we know it has because we are here, did it happen on Mars? And that has a lot of big, big questions, philosophical, more above my pay grade. But yeah, it is something that I feel like we as scientists are excited, but I really think the public and everybody should be excited about because it's an astrobiology question. It's the story of us.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: As scientists, we're super excited about these samples, but we really need to get out to the public. This isn't just about learning about Mars's history, this is about the broader context of us and the whole universe.

Katya Yanez: Absolutely. I mean, I got in my career late in the game. I had a whole life before this, but one of the things that draw me was watching all these more things geared towards the public. And Planetary Radio was a big influence for me as just someone that went back to community college, tried to study and figure out what I wanted to do. And it's like, you get one lifetime. I want to do what I want to do. And this was like, "Absolutely. It wasn't easy." But I did accounting for a long time and I sat behind a desk and I said, "I don't want to do this." What I did on my free time was watch all the documentaries about Mars exploration and someone pointed out, "Why don't you do that?" And I was like, "That is crazy." One class at a time. I work full-time for most of it, and now I'm in grad school, so it's never too late. Voices are needed of different backgrounds and different levels. So the fact that you weren't born the kid that was interested in space when you were four, it doesn't mean that you don't belong here. So it's a privilege to be here for sure.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Well, thank you so much.

Katya Yanez: Thank you so much.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We'll be right back after this short break.

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Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've spoken a lot in the past weeks about the intricacies of funding for NASA programs and how budget deficits impact missions and international partnerships. Tenth Mars was a blast, but there was a nervousness underpinning much of the discussions, a worry that Mars Sample Return and other space missions might not receive adequate funding in the coming years. And it isn't an unfounded concern. It's totally valid. The conference happened just one week after a surprising and devastating turn in lunar exploration. On July 17th, 2024, NASA announced the cancellation of the VIPER moon rover. The Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover or VIPER mission was originally planned to launch later this year. It would have journeyed to the permanently shadowed craters of the Moon's south pole. Past missions show that the lunar poles host at least 600 billion kilograms of water, ice, and there could be more. If we want to tap that resource to support future human exploration of the moon and Mars, we need to learn more about that water up close. That's what VIPER was designed to do. But sadly, just months before its launch with the rover fully built and almost done with testing, the mission was canceled. What could possibly lead to the end of a mission at stage in development? Here's Jack Kiraly, our director of government relations with the T. Hey, Jack. Good to see you again.

Jack Kiraly: Hey, Sarah. Good seeing you as well.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So we were actually together, all of us, The Planetary Society staff, got to be together in Pasadena just last week for our wonderful work retreat. And then we got the news that NASA's VIPER rover mission to the moon has been canceled. I'm really grateful that you and Casey were there to provide the context we needed because that actually shocked me.

Jack Kiraly: Yeah. I mean, for a mission at the place that it was in its development fully built, about to go into environmental testing to ensure that it can survive the harsh environment of the linear surface, it gets canceled. Not at any point in NASA's history has a mission this far along been canceled. I think the closest allegory we have is to the Dawn mission in the early 2000s, mid 2000s, and that was canceled, but immediately brought back. VIPER, literally sitting in a clean room in Southern California. And nobody knows what's going to happen next.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, why did NASA make this decision to cancel a mission that the United States has invested almost half a billion dollars to literally months before it was planned to launch?

Jack Kiraly: Now, that is a very good question. So the reason that was given is that due to supply chain issues, due to budget growth and the delay of the astrobotic second lunar landing attempt with their much larger Griffin Lander... If you remember earlier this year, they tried to land on the moon as a part of the Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, CLPS. They tried to land on the moon with their Peregrine lander. Something happened during takeoff and did not make it to the lunar surface. The Griffin Lander a little bit bigger was supposed to launch later this year, but that got delayed until late 2025. And based on the lighting conditions at the lunar south pole, VIPER needed to land in that. That's the latest in the current window that VIPER could land and do the remarkable science that it's designed to do. And so because of that schedule delay, because of cost growth over time and supply chain issues, NASA said, we can't do this anymore.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Which is a bummer for so many reasons. But going to the moon is hard. Space is difficult, and we're just beginning to see the first commercial entities try to land on the moon, and you'd think there'd be a little more wiggle room, a little more forgiveness for it. If this is the tactic we're going to be taking, canceling the mission instead of just maybe having to delay until that next launch window. But I'm understanding that that money has to come from somewhere, which puts everyone in a really difficult position.

Jack Kiraly: Exactly. So VIPER was supposed to, the budget profile that was laid out for it basically had the mission concluding at the end of fiscal year 2025. So if they did not have money beyond that, they wouldn't be able to keep the mission going. But there's a lot of things that NASA can do, and like you said, we've already invested over half a billion dollars in building this spacecraft and we've procured the services to land on the moon through Astrobotic, through that CLPS program. I will just say as a side note, that contract is a separate line item in the budget and is going to be paid out. Already over $200 million of that $300 million contract has been spent. And so the actual landing is not going to be affected. It's just the VIPER rover, which is half a billion dollars, is not going to be on that ride when it eventually happens. Instead, NASA will put what is called an inert mass, basically a chunk of metal to act as ballast to make sure that the spacecraft can remain in its design configuration.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: What are they going to do with this rover now that it won't be going on the spacecraft?

Jack Kiraly: Well, I guess when this episode comes out, it'll be for the next 24 hours until August 1st, NASA has opened up the bidding for other companies or other countries to offer to use the VIPER rover for some other designated purpose. But really a two-week period to request that scale of proposal when NASA is the only entity that really has the ability right now to land something of that size on the moon that already had the work in the pipeline to land it on the moon to then say, "Oh, hey, commercial industry, maybe you have an idea for this," but only giving them two weeks to figure that out is a very short period of time.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And we're on the verge of this Artemis program. We're trying to essentially create a sustainable, permanent human presence on the moon. And in order to do that, we're going to need water.

Jack Kiraly: Well, I would agree with that as would many members of the public and people on Capitol Hill that this VIPER is very much, although not funded through the Artemis program, is a precursor, but at the same time, this is the result of shrinking budgets for science. They're looking out past fiscal year 2025 and NASA can't plan any further in advance because what we saw this in FY '24, the current fiscal year that we're in, that we have these ambitious plans for what we were going to do in this fiscal year, Congress came in and said, "Nope, we're going to put a cap on the amount of money that the federal government can spend." And as a percentage of that, NASA got a huge cut and a lot of that went to science. Thankfully, Artemis program fully funded is still on track for their September 2025 launch of Artemis 2. Artemis 3 still kind of TBD, but September 2026 is the notion all date for that. But you need to have these things working in tandem, and that's the thing that the Decadal Survey talks a lot about is balance and having a balance of activities both within the science mission directorate, which is primarily exploration, and outside of that with the other elements of NASA. And so if we're going to be going to the moon, we need to know what is there, if we're going to start, if every time that we go there is going to be in advancing the infrastructure and structural support that we have there to go and not know what's there when we could have already known what's there is a waste.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: All of these science missions are so important and so part of a larger plan.

Jack Kiraly: Right. We are seeing delays to sub-missions that we care very deeply about. We're seeing shrinking budgets for research and analysis. Obviously, it's great that we have spacecraft all over the Solar System, but that data is not really going to tell us anything unless we have the people here on Earth who can analyze and put that data in context so that we can make these discoveries. We need that growth mindset when it comes to the federal budget, when it comes to space. And without that, we get things like VIPER, this cancellation that's happened, or looking in the astrophysics community. You see the threat that Chandra and Hubble are facing right now, and it's all part about this big story. This is not mission verse mission, and we don't want to go down that road because all science is worth pursuing. We need that robust balanced portfolio. It's that NASA top line number that needs to go up so that we can send astronauts back to the moon, but we can also send the rovers before them so that we can find that water right so that we can go and return those very compelling samples from Mars that we can send a nuclear-powered rotorcraft to Titan in a reasonable timeframe. We have limited launch windows on a lot of these things, and shrinking budgets does not achieve success in space.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I know we've been talking a lot about budget requests and everything over the last few weeks, but it's because things are changing so quickly and this is a pivotal time in which NASA's budget is going to be decided. I understand that just recently we got the Senate Appropriations Committee budget request for NASA.

Jack Kiraly: Yes. So actually on Thursday, the 25th of July, the Senate Committee on appropriations held a hearing where they took up four different bills to fund the federal government. And one of those was the commerce justice and science appropriations bill, which funds NASA as well as the National Science Foundation, NOAA, Department of Commerce and Department of Justice. It's all wrapped into one package. And NASA's budget actually grows in this budget request. It grows by a significant portion, actually a little bit above what the president's budget request, which for those who, again, haven't been following the federal budgeting process, really kicks off this process every year and around February, March timeframe. And so that sometimes is like the high watermark for what NASA attempts to achieve. And the fact that the Senate came in above that number and provides very strong and supportive language for things across the planetary science division, including full funding for Dragonfly, funding at minimum the requested level for Mars Sample Return with a very strong stance saying that we need to figure out what this path forward is, so that we can return those samples, which is very strong, positive language that was great to see. And fully funds the Lunar Discovery and Exploration Program, LDEP, which is what funds VIPER, which is where that $33 million lives for the duration of fiscal year 2025 that would fund VIPER through its launch and operations. $33 million is what we're talking about out of a overall budget that again grows relative both to fiscal year 2024 and the president's budget request. So actually really compelling. I will add one more thing about VIPER in relation to this hearing. Like I said, four bills were up and just within one of them, you have Department of Commerce, Department of Justice, NSF, NASA, NOAA, all of these amazing programs and huge government agencies. And for a moment, we got to talk about space. It's very hard in a two and a half hour hearing to actually break through when you're something like NASA or NSF. That's such a small portion of the federal budget. But actually, Senator Capito Republican from West Virginia actually spoke up for VIPER and said, "I hope that the committee leadership will work with her and with the science community to reverse this decision that NASA has made and get VIPER back on the books." And that is in large part because of the groundswell of support that we've seen for VIPER. One of the things that The Planetary Society did this week, just like you said, we were at lunch last week or two weeks ago at this point talking about this cancellation, and Monday the 22nd, we sent that letter to over 200 key congressional staff. Not just anybody. I mean, these are key people who are in charge of appropriations policy, who are in charge of science policy for members of Congress. We sent that letter and had it in their inbox with a thousand signatures, and it made a huge impact ahead of this hearing that happened on Thursday the 25th. And on top of that, another thousand people signed over the course of the week, and we followed up that email with another one saying, "Look, we've doubled the number of people who are excited about the VIPER mission and wish to see it reinstated as part of NASA's program." And all of that is part of this overall effort to increase the science mission director of budget from us here at The Planetary Society because like we were just talking about with shrinking budgets, you get less scientific opportunities, you get less scientific return, you get less discovery, and that's what we need right now. We need more discovery, more scientific exploration, more space.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: And see, I'm happy to hear that there's good news at the end of this somber story. And as we spoke about just last week, sometimes these moments where missions seem to be at the end of the road aren't actually the end of the story. We talked about the VERITAS mission, what it went through and our efforts and the efforts of the broader scientific community to save that mission, and we achieved that. We succeeded as we have with many other missions before. And while we don't currently have an advocacy action directly for people right now to support the VIPER mission because it literally just happened, there are ways that people can share their voice on this. We do have something in our action center right now, not specifically about VIPER, but about trying to write to congress to directly tell them to please fund all these amazing scientific missions and to increase the NASA budget so that we can do all this amazing science. So there is something to be done, but we're still trying to figure out what we want to do for VIPER specifically.

Jack Kiraly: Right. I mean, we're at a point right now where unfortunately there's a lot of just wait and see, and I know as an advocate, as someone who is excited about this grassroots movement for space that you and me and our listeners are a part of, sometimes there's things we want to do. But right now we are taking stock of what these budget proposals look like, figuring out strategic next steps for the community and broader public to get involved in the decision-making process and keeping track of key pieces of legislation. Congress is about to go into what's called August recess. Basically Congress is out of work for the entire month of August and into early September. And then they're going to have a three-week sprint before the end of the fiscal year. A lot is going to happen in those three weeks, so we have got to be ready. And so stay in tune with what Planetary Society, what we're working on here. Check our Action Center. Like you said there's that action right there that you can say, "Hey, please fund NASA at this higher funding amount." But there's also an action in there asking members of Congress to join the Planetary Science Caucus, which is a great tool, has been incredibly effective. Earlier this year, we had a letter that was led by our two co-chairs of the Planetary Science Caucus representatives, Judy Chu from California, and Representative Don Bacon from Nebraska, as well as Representative Glenn Ivy from Maryland. The three of them came together, got this letter together, and then 44 members of Congress signed it because we have this operation here in DC and we have the infrastructure with the caucus available to deploy when moments like this arise. So please encourage your member of Congress if you're in the US, whether you're a citizen or just a resident, you can write to your member of Congress and ask them to join the Planetary Science Caucus and ask them to support this higher funding from NASA science. If you do those two things, we can start to build that groundswell that going into September, we can deploy those strategic actions I keep mentioning, and potentially have some future actions for you members of the public to take part in, but really making that case for a strong national space science program, strong national space exploration program that supports all of the fantastic missions from VIPER to Chandra, to Mars Sample Return, Dragonfly, VERITAS, DAVINCI, all of the amazing programs that we love and care about. So please, planetary.org/action. Make it happen.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Thanks so much, Jack. We're going to do everything that we can and in the meantime, so much to look forward to. And so happy to be a part of a group that is so committed to trying to save these missions and to do the amazing science. If VIPER has a chance, it's going to be because of space advocates and people that love space as much as everyone who's listening right now.

Jack Kiraly: Thank you, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Now let's check in with our chief scientist here at The planetary Society, dr. Bruce Betts for What's Up?

Bruce Betts: La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Hi, Bruce.

Bruce Betts: Hi, Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Are you just-

Bruce Betts: La, la, la, la, la, la.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: ... so jazzed up about the Olympics? It's just coming out in this strange, la, la, la, la, la, la?

Bruce Betts: La, la, la, la, la, la, La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la. Yes.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: There's been so much going on in the world, man, between life events, what's going on in the news, but also with the Tenth Mars Conference and finally getting to watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics. It's been cool.

Bruce Betts: It's been cool.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: So while I was at the conference, I got to speak with Ken Farley right after they just announced that they found this really cool sample that Perseverance took out of the Cheyava Falls rock. And everyone is really excited. This is a really interesting rock. It shows some evidence that there could have been some life in the past, but we need to do a lot more science in order to prove that, okay? Nothing is definitive at this point at all, and we're going to have to wait years to get this rock back, but we know that there's definitely organic compounds in it. What is it about finding organics on Mars that's so exciting considering that we found organics in many places in the Solar, System, asteroids, the waters coming out of Enceladus.

Bruce Betts: Yeah. They're a dime a dozen out there. But on Mars as well as the surface of some of these other places, they break down usually when they're hanging out on the surface because of the ultraviolet radiation is so much more intense with the thin atmosphere than say we have. Also, you've got the super oxidizing perchlorates in the regulate, the dirt that tends to break stuff down. And so finding them, hanging out is wild and crazy. I've been seeing the headlines and NASA was a little more zany with their press release on the life thing, so people have really bid on it, and life is... It's not usually the first explanation one reaches for, but obviously they've done a lot of work. There's a lot more to do, as you say. So I want to be the voice of... Let's just hang on a second. But if there is life on Mars and I do find evidence of past microbes, I think we should name it after Sarah.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: No, we'll name it after all the scientists that put in the good work, and then I'll just be exuberantly excited about it.

Bruce Betts: I think you already are.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: It's true. But I mean, whether or not this is actual evidence of past life on Mars, I think this is a really great moment for communication, and I think this is why NASA is so excited about sharing this message with everyone, because Mars Sample Return is one of those things that it's just so pivotal to our understanding of how that planet works, how our planet is different, and the broader story here about life in the universe. We need to be able to tell that story in order to get people excited about this mission so that it gets the funding that it deserves. Because just imagine, man, if we had to leave that rock behind on Mars for another 30, 40 years, knowing what a treasure trove is there, that would just kill me. And just right before that too, curiosity found that really cool sulfur rock that it accidentally rolled over and crushed a boulder in half. I feel like rovers need to start breaking rocks.

Bruce Betts: Well, they do sometimes and they have found things by driving over the fact that they do that intentionally of looking back at the dirt when they find deposits under the surface sometimes. And it turns out that Mars is super interesting and mysterious and has a lot of neat stuff to try to figure out. And so it's awesome. Go Mars.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: All right. So...

Bruce Betts: You ready?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: Let's do it.

Bruce Betts: All right. First of all, I have to guiltily admit my shame that I've been watching so much Olympics. I'm so tired. I forgot I promised Olympics random space facts. So I'll get back to you with those. I've got a different one today. It's super cool, has nothing obviously to do with the Olympics, so I apologize. We'll get back to that. So let us get you to your random space fact. So comet tails, that's what we're talking today. Comet tails, they are ridiculously long. And in fact, the longest where we've actually detected the tail was basically implied that it's more than seven AU in length of the ion tail of Comet 153P/Ikeya-Zhang which is double the previous record holder. And so that's seven and a half time... They detected it out at Saturn with Cassini when the comet was in the inner Solar System. So that's the longest, but they typically stretch from one planet orbit to another. They're one of the largest, at least transient structures in the Solar System, although very tenuous. That one is amazing to me. It's an amazing random space fact. What do you think, Sarah?

Sarah Al-Ahmed: I mean, 7 AU is ridiculous. But several years back I used to present a show called Let's Make a Comet for theaters full of children. And one of my coworkers at the time always used to say that comets are like kids. They leave a mess everywhere they go. So it's not super surprising. And just a few weeks ago we were talking with someone about the Beta Pictoris system and the fact that all the way from here at Earth, they managed to see evidence of what they called a cattail at the time that they thought was made out of commentary material that they could see all the way from here, from Earth with JWST. That's not super shocking, but also yikes.

Bruce Betts: Yikes is right. Speaking of cattails, the other common thing that people have probably heard, which is the likening of comets to cat behavior. You never know with a lot of cats what they're going to do. And in fact, when we see comets and they get predicted to be really, really bright in a few months, they sometimes just break up and it's hard to predict the cattails. "Hey, dog. What are you doing?" My 85-pound dog, the middle one is climbing on me right now. Okay, sorry. They love Planetary Radio, by the way. "I love space."

Sarah Al-Ahmed: All right. Well, with that...

Bruce Betts: All right, everybody. Go out there, look up for the night sky, and think about how long an ion tail would be in your head. Thank you and goodnight.

Sarah Al-Ahmed: We've reached the end of this week's episode of Planetary Radio, but we'll be back next week with an update on the Hunt for Planet 9. Love the show? You can get Planetary Radio T-shirts at planetary.org/shop along with lots of other cool spacey merchandise. Help others discover the passion, beauty and joy of space science and exploration by leaving a review or a rating on platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Your feedback not only brightens our day, but helps other curious minds find their place in space through Planetary Radio. You can also send us your space thoughts, questions, and poetry at our email, at [email protected]. Or if you're a Planetary Society member, leave a comment in the planetary radio space in our member community app. Planetary Radio is produced by The Planetary Society in Pasadena, California, and it's made possible by our members who love Mars and everything it can tell us about our place in the universe. You can join us as we work together to support missions like Mars Sample Return and VIPER at planetary.org. Mark Hilverda and Rae Paoletta are our associate producers. Andrew Lucas is our audio editor. Josh Doyle composed our theme, which is arranged and performed by Pieter Schlosser. And until next week, ad astra.