 Well, hi there friends of tomorrow. Welcome to orbit 12.15. My name's Jade This is my lovely co-host Sarah and today we're sitting down with joctor Jared Espley of the NASA Goddard NASA Goddard and he is Not only responsible for working on Maven, but has also done work on Juno and is also a D&D dungeon master We will delve into all of those things starting right now So Jared just kind of diving right into it I really wanted to start off talking about Maven because we think it's a little bit of an underrated Mars mission. So can you just kind of explain what you specifically do for Maven? Sure. No, I do appreciate the interest in the Mars program and specifically like you say on Maven Which maybe doesn't quite get quite as much attention and glory as some of the rovers that are on the surface And in part that's because we're an orbiter. So we're an orbit around Mars and We've been in orbit for several years now actually coming up on five years And our primary science goal is to try and understand what happened to the Martian Atmosphere over billions of years and how possibly the Martian atmosphere was blown away bit by bit by the solar wind So we can go into that in more detail as we continue talking if it's like Always yeah, absolutely So okay, so it's basically studying the Martian atmosphere. So What basically why are we doing this because we can foresee this potentially happening to earth or what's kind of the Not only the scientific payback with this, but also I guess how do we apply it back down to the science we're doing here on earth? Mm-hmm. Yeah, those are two great questions Both, you know, what's the intrinsic science that we're trying to do at Mars and what are some of the broader Implication to what we can do with that science what we're learning So we try to answer the first part first which is about the basic context of what we're doing with Mars science. So What we know is that Mars used to be a very warm wet Possibly habitable. I notice I didn't say habitat, but habitable could there could have been life Because it was warm and wet place and we know that by looking at the geological evidence We look we can see on the surface that there are dry riverbeds dry lakes. We can look at the The mineral evidence we can see the different types of minerals So some of the results for the Mars rovers tell us about the different clays About the different types of minerals that get laid down in a water environment on the surface And so if there had to not only have been A sprinkled amount of water, but actually that couldn't be it It had to actually be copious amounts of water that were on the surface to lay down these riverbeds dry lakes and all these minerals But then obviously we look today and obviously Mars is a cold dry Inhospitable environment today. That's that's obvious looking with our rovers and orbital assets And so that's the context in which Maven comes in is we have this mystery this fundamental mystery where we had a warm wet Possibly habitable environment in the ancient Mars And today we have this cold dry environment And so what Maven is designed to do is to investigate one of the primary hypotheses about how that could have come about Which is that we think that the atmosphere was in fact thicker and warmer and therefore the surface was much warmer on Mars Billions of years ago and then gradually over time that atmosphere got eroded away by the interaction with the solar wind which basically Streams off of the Sun all Continuously and for billions of years bit by bit the Martian atmosphere might have been stripped away So that's the hypothesis that we've been investigating with Maven. I Love it and so Let's cut to the spoilers. Is that correct? Yes, I laid out the hypothesis is that correct great Yes, it does appear to be true. So, okay, all right, we're done here. We can move on and talk about what I know That we can so many complications to that story But the bottom line is that hypothesis does seem to be worn out by what we're seeing with Maven today And so what I mean by that is again, this is an orbiting spacecraft And so we're in this very elliptical orbit So we come in very close to the planet and we go relatively far out several thousand kilometers far out And what we have on board is we have a variety of science instruments instruments that are designed to capture the particles The atmospheric particles that are flying away from the planet or not And also instruments on board to measure the electrical and magnetic fields which control which direction those particles would go And so basically with this orbit that we had and like I said, we've been there already for five years We are effectively trying to create a net to capture all these particles Obviously with just one spacecraft in time We can't actually capture all the particles that are flying away from the planet and start to try and extrapolate what's going on on the broader scale We can't do that with just one spacecraft at one point in time But gradually over time over these many years that we're in orbit that we are able to start building up this net That's helping us to understand How much how many particles are flying away from the planet at any given time and now that we've done that we've have in fact started to capture that there is in fact a Comparatively tiny amount of oxygen a comparatively tiny amount of hydrogen that is flowing away from the planet today It's about 10 to the 25th particles, which is a huge number But that's literal individual atomic or molecular molecules particles And so when you add that all up Then that actually comes out to like half a gallon of water per second, which is not very much But you multiply that over billions of years and it does look like in fact that bears out this Hypothesis that I laid out at the beginning that the Martian atmosphere has been blown away bit by bit So that's what we think is our current understanding is that yes There definitely could have been a significant amount of loss from the planet But as soon as you peel back the layer and you start trying to answer even more Complicated questions, then you realize there's a lot more going on. There's a lot more Confounding factors and that goes to that question that other question the rest of the beginning About how we can apply this information to our understanding of our own planet understanding of other planets in the solar system and our understanding of Other planets outside of rural solar system we get my wife to turn Hello, I was trying to train a thought as I was waving, but apparently every five minutes I'll need to move dramatically enough to keep motion and we're okay with that. Yeah, absolutely feel we need We can even join in yeah spontaneous break out. Yeah, so we have a running gag in our in our science team that that you know when somebody doesn't have a Something that they're really ready to say then somebody to just jump up and do like an interpretive dance Particles from the planet. So there's always a joke about well, hey Dave Why don't you get up and do your interpretive dance again? So I won't actually do the particle flying away interpretive dance for you guys right now Please do Yeah, we'll join in you can teach us the particle escaping interpretive dance and every time the lights go out Break Beautiful so I'm bringing it to the chat room There's actually a few folks asking some really interesting questions about Mars's magnetosphere from James Johnson Gregorius Siddharmo And a couple of others. I'll kind of combine the questions into one But they're essentially asking is there any theory on how Mars lost its magnetic field or If it even had a magnetic field protecting it in the past Yes Okay, great. Let me answer try and answer that question Let me step back and give some context for everybody else. I won't directly answer the question immediately. I'll give the context So in general many planets throughout our solar system and we presume throughout the universe Have planetary sized magnetic fields and so that includes your own planet earth And what we think is happening there is that if you start with any sort of tiny little seed magnetic field It doesn't really matter what the seed magnetic field is It could be something from solar wind flowing out way and space carries a magnetic field with it a tiny little seed Magnetic field if it flows past something that's electrically conducting in other words, for example iron molten iron in the core of a planet then it can produce Induce a magnetic field there and that can enter into a feedback cycle that we call that a dynamo and those dynamos create Planetary sized magnetic field to get the feedback loop of motion and Electrically conducting material combined together So we think that's what's happening at earth. We've had this strong planetary dynamo planetary magnetic field we know that's happening at Jupiter and Saturn at Uranus and Neptune it's happening at Mercury but It doesn't seem to be happening today at Mars when we fly by with previous spacecraft and Maven With our magnetometer and instrument that can measure the magnetic field. We don't see any Strong planetary sized magnetic field Instead what we do see at Mars who we still we see some patches of the crust that still seem to be strongly magnetized But they're very localized and so we think that is not Originating from the interior of the planet. It's not a planetary magnetic field But there's parts of the crust that are magnetized and so that what that does is that gives us a Clue about what might have happened at Mars. And so the interpretation is that basically the Martian Mars as a planet would have had a planetary magnetic field originally and then at some point that planetary magnetic field ceased and the most likely scenario is that Mars is just Smaller and therefore literally had less heat and so very simply Once the Martian core froze there was no longer molten iron like ours is then there was no longer the motion Nor There wasn't the motion so electric inducting But it wasn't moving around it sort of couldn't create this feedback loop that the Dynamo needs and so at that point the Dynamo would have ceased at Mars and the magnetic field that was there Disappeared and what was ever going on at that time if there were rocks that could Be magnetically susceptible have some iron grains in them or whatever hematite grains in them Then they would have kept the magnetic field that they had at that time We see that on earth you know like individual rocks can pick up the magnetic field that that's near them But on average on earth that all canceled out especially in the background of the planetary magnetic field But at Mars these individual rocks were just kept their magnetic field and then if nothing happened for the next billion years That's what the magnetic field we would still see so that's interpretation is that Mars had a magnetic field global planetary Magnet field and then gradually over time that went away presumably because of the lack of sufficient heat and then the crystal fields kept their configuration unless something happened to them like a impact crater or volcanism and so that's why on the surface wherever we see Large volcanoes or large impacts the magnetic field signatures disappear All right So we do have a question from our chat that's following up on the magnetic fields so you've got a magnetometer on Maven and Project lead for the magnetometer there. Yes That's correct. All right so, how do you use the magnetometer system and So sorry rebel on our chat room is asking how do you use the magnetometer system? And how can you make a map from that data? Yeah, it's a good question. Okay, so First of all, let me say Magnet field to really mysterious Is what I was studying for 15 and some said on the other What as a fundamental thing they are, you know, one of these fundamental forces of nature and and so the What we do with them in space is perhaps Slightly more straightforward, there's two major categories of Magnetic fields that you can measure in space ones the ones that I've been describing already where something magnetic fields is Walked into or part of some physical Part of the planet either the core or the rocks or the crust or whatever So that's one category of measurements that you can make with a magnetometer space fly close to a planet You measure how the man field looks as you fly close and especially with an orbit is great because you can kind of see how it Kind of changes that you go flying by trying to do like a little diagram So you've got the the pointing of the magnetic field in one direction is is your spacecraft flies by you can imagine out Basically the compass needle would change if you're flying by effectively and then the other category of the magnetic fields that you can measure in space or magnetic fields that are produced by Very energetic gas what we call plasma So the upper atmospheres of planets and the solar wind itself and space interplanetary space and even interstellar space It's filled with plasma and that just means Particles that have gotten enough energy that they've been come ionized And once they're ionized then electro magnetic fields can be produced and or Control the motion of those particles and so we can measure the magnetic fields of the plasmas of the ion spheres of the Magnetospheres of the upper parts of planets, and so that's another aspect of magnetic field measurements that we make So that's here that was part of the person's question Rebels question They asked how how do we use the magnetometer and then what was the second half? How do you build maps from that data? Oh? Yeah, great. So I kind of already addressed that but it's basically as one one orbit pass by itself is not going to build But once you get Dozens hundreds thousands of orbit passes then you can very gradually be building up a map where those crystal fields are Because as you fly by every time there's going to be a slightly different angle of the magnetic field as you fly by until the time You can build those maps up Awesome, so I have another question from the chat room see fit the question is actually going back to the little localized magnetic fields Surface rock, so if those magnetic fields are local are any of those local fields strong enough to affect habitability So I know we've discovered some magnetic field that it fields on the surface of the moon that cause little Pockets of protection from the Sun are any of these margin pockets strong enough Yeah, absolutely. That's a great question They undoubtedly change the trajectory of particles in the atmosphere So energetic particles As they come in will affect the amount of radiation that the surface received I mean there's several questions of habitability, so The most direct way is is is a radiation so that that's the part that I'm answering and so Yes, the magnetic fields are certainly strong enough localize to affect the trajectories of the particle Energetic particles are which there are two categories. So it's just solar energetic particles, which come from the Sun It's the name and then there's also the galactic cosmic rays rays is kind of a misnomer there They're also really energetic particles. So we go into the whole Light is a both a wave at a particle. Anyway galactic cosmic rays and solar energy particles They come in and they're the radiation in space that you have to worry about the local Crustomagnetic fields at Mars aren't going to do digitally for the galactic cosmic rays They just come out of so much energy. They're produced by astrophysical phenomenon supernova. Here we go They come in from the supernova's and the Galactic events and extra galactic events those things have so much energy They just go screaming and they don't care about any sort of magnetic fields They don't care about our own planets magnetic field really the only thing that really seems to affect their Input into the solar system is the Sun's magnetic field has a very slight modulation on the amount of galactic cosmic rays So that's not helped by the crust of magnetic fields, but the solar energetic particles are in fact definitely Potentially affected by the magnetic fields and and they are definitely affected in the atmosphere the question that Some of us are very actively interested in looking at is whether or not the surface where you would potentially have rovers or Astronauts someday would literally be slightly protected in one spot versus another because of the crust of magnetic fields and So the answer is we don't really know yet And that's okay. That's actually almost more exciting as an answer than having a definitive one, right? Yes, why aren't we there yet? all right, so Thank you so much for basically Explaining all the amazing work you're doing for Maven and while staying on the topic of Magnetism and all that exciting stuff in space. Let's go ahead and transition into talking about your work on Juno because Speaking of magnetosphere's I've never heard of something more terrifying in our own solar systems backyard than Then then that of Jupiter's magnetosphere So can you delve into a little bit of the work that you did on Juno? Yeah, I can so I Mean The work that I personally did on Juno fell into two categories. So earlier in my career And then let me step back It takes a long time to get to planets Particularly it takes a long time to get to planets in the outer solar system So a typical Mars Trajectory takes about eight to ten months obviously that could be different if you had some sort of rocket But the most trajectories to Mars take about eight to ten months most Missions to the outer solar system meaning places like Jupiter and Saturn and Uranus and Neptune and Pluto and beyond so like New Horizons Take years many years. So I started working on the Juno project way back in somewhere around 2008 something like that and at that point we were developing the instrument and I was a relatively junior Member of the team and so I was helping to calibrate the instrument the manpower inch So that was one aspect of the work that I've done on Juno And then many years later it launched and then many years later it actually got to Jupiter so I got to Jupiter in 2016 at that point I was pretty fully engaged with what I was doing on Viva But they also needed some help down at NASA headquarters to do something. That's called being the program scientist Now I struggle to explain exactly what a program scientist does it doesn't mean that They're in charge of the mission There's a principal investigator typically who's in charge of the mission That's a scientist at some other institution or it could be an answer doesn't really matter There's a principal investigator in charge of the mission and then NASA as an agency is obviously directing the principal investigator and all of his or Co-investigators to implement the mission and somebody at headquarters as a headquarters has to be that interface to make sure that the Principal investigator mission is doing what they said scientifically and also somebody has to be in charge to make sure that they're spending the money They're supposed to so there's somebody who's called the program executive It's in charge of the money and the engineering side and there's somebody who's the program scientist And that was me for several years. In fact until just a couple weeks ago when I was able to pass the torch on to somebody else And so as program scientist my job was to make sure that The mission was doing scientifically what it claimed to do what it promised to NASA headquarters It was going to do so verify that the science measurements that that were laid out and agreed upon are being bet and also to make sure that any Any sort of communications from the project in interesting science results or being interpreted for my Colleagues at NASA headquarters because not all them are necessarily specialists in all the different aspects So that's what I did as a program scientist and then early on I helped out with the magnetometer So I got to see kind of both from both edge literally like above the project again Not in charge but like from the highest perspective see the whole thing and then like down in the weeds like helping Calibrate and build the instrument and so those are things that have done on you Nice, and I think that offers such a unique perspective from you personally because to have like you said like that grand vision oversight As well as like getting into the nitty-gritty of the the mechanisms behind all this so As mentioned before Jupiter is pretty intense. I'm pretty dramatic. You know definitely King of the planets Rightly so So what is one of what are a few of kind of the most like profound things you learned during the during your time on the Juno mission? Yeah, so We know a moderate amount about what's going on on the surface of Jupiter We actually made a lot of discoveries with Juno about the surface But that was not Juno's primary purpose Juno's primary purpose of the mission was to peer underneath the clouds of Jupiter And to try and get a sense of what's going on on the inside Excuse me and when so what I mean by that is that? Well like we've already talked about with Maven we have a magnetometer on board and Juno and we have some other instruments as well like the microwave radiometer and a Gravity investigation that allows to peer into the interior and get a sense of what's going on on the inside And so we're trying to make a sense of How is Juno stacked up on the inside does it have a Core how big is the core? What's the core likely to be made out of what's on top of the core is the material that's under super high pressure But it's not rocky. Is there some sort of a metallic layer that's on top of the core And then what's the deep atmosphere look like? So that was the intention and it Juno's doing a great job like I described on Maven These are kind of slow-moving missions and what I mean by that is it's not like you just make an immediate discovery just based on one Set of observations. You have to build up a map So what Juno is trying to do is build up a 3d map and we're about halfway through its mission But though it's been there since 2016 so going on three years now It's it's only halfway through its mission That's because it has a really large orbit that it's in it's a 53-day orbit So every 53 days it comes close enough to the planet to make the observations that are most useful for those Interior measurements So we're only halfway through but what we know already is that the interior Does not seem to have the very finite very dense core that everybody assumed that a gas giant would have So most people listening will know that Jupiter of course is a gas giant move that most of it is its gas It's not a solid body Like the earth is but we thought that maybe there was a rocky core on the inside and it doesn't look like that It looks like it's got some sort of diffuse core that's spread out like the mass that's inside there is really kind of Spread out and that frankly to me doesn't really make a lot of sense That's not really my area of science expertise, but that this is one of the major results It's come out of the mission is that the core is spread out and that and diffuse Another major thing is that the deep atmosphere is connected to the atmosphere that we can see So everybody's familiar with the great red spot the huge storm at Jupiter It turns out that when we measured flew over the great red spot with with the spacecraft or measure with the microwave Radiometer we can see all the way deep down into The the roots of the great red spot and it looks like they're connected all the way down to to the basically the layer where the Magnetic field would take over the the conducting electrical metallic layer So that great storm is going all the way down and furthermore seems to have more heat down below than than up above So there's definitely heat driving something underneath the great storm the great red spot and then Just to take a breath I mean might have some more questions, but the third major category of interior science that we've learned From Juno is we learned a lot about the magnetic field again, and we've already talked about Dynamo's planetary dynamo's so it all still applies to Jupiter Jupiter clearly has a planetary dynamo clearly has electrically Conductive material clearly has it in motion pushing this tremendous magnetosphere Which basically this means where the magnetic field controls things But when we got really close and we took a measurement of that magnetic field It looks like it's actually coming from several spots It's coming as as with Earth from the poles, but there's also spots near the equator And so it seems like maybe there's multiple dynamo's going on so maybe there's conducting material kind of deep down and then there's conducting material higher up or Maybe we just don't understand and again There's a lot of that Where we just don't understand and like I think you said Sarah, that's a great thing That's what you want in science. You want to be confused and have a cool mystery to work on it So so that's exactly where we're at with a lot of these things Absolutely. Yeah, but Fuddled is as I like to call it So sorry, and I just find this topic so fascinating just magnetosphere is in general So you mentioned that you know, it's not just emanating from the poles, but you know from the equator as well So dance party. Oh dance party Better than that Jared We know you have a better dance moves than that So so when you visualize Earth's magnetosphere, you know, like you said like north and south poles And then they kind of jut out like this like like almost like butterfly wings But because there we go because as you said Jupiter is gaseous and it's you know at very different dynamics there Does that have an impact on kind of like I guess the chaoticness of its magnetic field? Does it make it a little bit less predictable and a little bit more tumultuous? That's a great question. I don't think we understand the dynamics of the interior well enough That's literally what we're trying to understand To really make that connection certainly the upper atmosphere is very stormy and is very tumultuous like you said And that like I said, that's another really cool result that we weren't intending to really look forward You know again the intent of you know is to look underneath But we we found a lot of thunderstorms and a lot of White that's occurring that you can just visually see on the surface that we hadn't really had a good handle of before So that's a really cool result another really cool result from Juno going to that to that point of the tumultuousness of the atmosphere is We'd never had any good views of the poles of Jupiter before because most of our observations are from Earth So you could you know point telescopes like the Hubble or something, but you can you obviously can't see above the planet From our own planet, but the way Juno's orbit is we come in over the poles and so That's allowed us to see the poles and there's these really huge Circumpolar cyclones we call them so they're just circling around the poles and there's several of them I always forget how many are on the south and how many in the north there's eight on one pole and five on the other pole And I'm sure one of their viewers can probably look it up Jack That's a good but what but they're these huge storms and so why are there? Why are there five of them up there? What why don't they merge together because here at Earth you some of the people viewers might have heard about the polar vortex here at Earth That's causing all kinds of crazy weather. It's the same idea. You get these these Storms that create in the poles, but there's only one really here at Earth and so why are there all these storms up there? So nobody knows it's I think it's an open question for the atmospheric dynamism Speaking of questions, you've actually answered some of the things from our chat and like Luther on YouTube was wondering what other instruments are on Jupiter and what will they be doing? So thank you for jumping ahead and We also there are a few more that I haven't mentioned there's several other plasma and particle instruments on board That helped as well and probably the instrument I haven't mentioned but I've implicitly applied is the Juno camera instrument Which is just a simple camera was in fact. It was not reasonably intended as a full science instrument But it clearly if you're gonna go to Jupiter you want a camera at it And that's where a lot of the really public-facing results have come out So people have been paying attention to Juno have probably seen the images. Well, that's just often Juno cam So that that's been a spectacular success. I would say One more thing about Juno cam before I move off it everybody should know that that data is freely available And you can go and you can download it and you can manipulate it So a lot of your hopefully some of your viewers that are a part of that And that's been a really huge success I would say it's people sometimes make these beautiful pieces of scientific art where science data It's literally like an art that you hang in your room and there's some people make them like whimsical too You know, they take the image and they'll they'll make like little cartoon things And they can make it fun. So that's awesome because everybody can take the data and do what they want with it And so I think that's really cool. Yeah those images that are coming off of Juno cam there One of the things that you might want to look for when you're Searching for those images you want to get the lower saturation images the original you want to make sure that You're looking at the original data or one of those a saturation boosted kind of artist concept artist enhanced images Just be sure what which one you're looking at the the original data itself is amazing enough But a lot of the pictures that we see though the really boosted colors with the purples. Yeah, those pretty gorgeous Those have been those have already been tweaked by Yeah, I people at home. Yeah, so we want to be careful about that But the original data is just stunning absolutely and oh so which leads me to another question from our chat So, okay See fit again knowing what we know Now know what instrument change if any do you wish would have been included in the Juno mission or for future missions? What would you include on a Jupiter mission? That's a good question. I Mean Juno is a very focused mission Juno is designed to investigate Jupiter and Juno is designed to investigate not just Jupiter by the interior of Jupiter And it had to be that way because it's it's not a what we call flagship mission. And so it's not a mission like Curiosity Mars curiosity or something like that where it was an agency driven mission Instead it was a focused principal investigator led mission So I'm not sure that I I know off the top of my head exactly what else I would change about the the focus of Juno but a slightly different flavor of that question would be What would I want in a Jupiter system mission and the answer is something similar to what we're doing already as an agency? Which is getting ready to send missions to the moons of Jupiter is Jupiter itself is a fantastic interesting place But it's moons are really awesome as well And of course your viewers will know the four major moons of Jupiter Which are Io Europa, Ganymede and Callisto And so there's a major effort underway at NASA right now to send a mission to Europa possibly multiple missions possibly To Europa and so that would be one thing that I'd be really excited about in the future for a Jupiter system mission is those European By the way, I've managed to get my autocorrect now to change to not whenever I start to type your rope in Europa it used to fix it to a European It doesn't do that. So I've trained my autocorrect to respond to my planetary science Gotta love AI Beautiful, so you kind of touched on to where you'd like to see the future trajectory of Not only Jovian missions, but you know Jovian moon missions as as you said they're fascinating worlds unto themselves So then Where where where do you where would you like to see I guess both the Maven and the Juno missions? How would you like to see those continue and where do you see? This ultimately headed so going back to Maven talking about Mars So learning all of this information and all of this data about you know, what happened to its atmosphere What it was once like in its past. This is very important for looking towards the future as you know There's a lot of talk of going to Mars potentially Habitating it. Is that the word habitabilizing you let it Know all of the cinnamon cinnamon cinnamon there all the cinnamon cinnamon anyways before I keep making a fool of myself Where where do you see the futures of these missions going and? What do you think? How does that tie back into? I guess, you know human exploration of space and getting closer and closer to these bodies? Yeah, I think we're at a really sincerely interesting time like it's always Well, we're coming up on the 15th anniversary of the Apollo landings and so that's really, you know, I think reflective for a lot of us I mean, I you know not judging, but I'm pretty sure all of us here are speaking We don't remember the Apollo landings, but I know many of our colleagues do And it's I think it's a time to reflect upon how far we've gone, but how much we still have yet available to us I think it's also exciting how much interest there is in Society in general and also, you know, it's thinking of like SpaceX and Blue Origin and all the other new space tech companies that are out there that are interested in In getting to Mars and getting to the moon With this opportunities for all the upcoming lunar Commercial landers and the science opportunities there. There's a ton of opportunities there So I really honestly think that they're that we're on the cusp of being able to actually push back out into the solar system again Not just with the scientific robots that that my career is based on and my career Hopefully will continue to be based upon but also with with astronauts I think there's a genuine opportunity here that we will in the near future All these forces are synergistically working together to push us towards a A major next step in exploration of the solar system So speaking of that next step with Mars and what you know of Mars is magnetosphere in the atmosphere and Well, what you need to have humans Live sustainably on the few on the surface What do you think is the best option for actually having that long-term habitation? What would we need to do? Yeah, so sometimes people ask, you know, whether or not we Would need to restart the planetary magnetic field because as we talked about we think Mars used to This is actually one of the important things that I think is coming out of magnet science It's kind of esoteric at first appearance Then What we what we're trying to understand is how Planetary magnetic fields impact the amount of atmospheric erosion that can occur because remember back to that basic idea that I was describing With what we're learning from Maven is that it seems like The solar wind is in fact coming into the upper a Martian atmosphere and gradually blowing away bit by bit the Martian atmosphere And so kind of the classic story that we've always told is that happens because Mars does not have a planetary magnetic field and therefore the solar wind particles can directly access the upper Martian atmosphere and Interact and below the particles away Well, it's what we're finding with Maven is that is actually way more complex than that It's really I mean Mars is a great laboratory for this and what I mean by that is Where were these strong crystal magnetic fields are again, not planetary size But just localized crystal magnetic field. We can see differences in the amount of atmosphere being blown away And furthermore, we know from our own planet that actually those solar wind particles do interact with the Upper atmosphere of our own planet and they create the aurora and that so that's a large part where the aurora the southern and northern lights come from And when that happens, it also seems to be driving away bit by bit some of the terrestrial atmosphere And so and we've always had our magnetic field a global planetary field So I think I think there's a genuine Paradigm I won't call it a paradigm shift, but a paradigm uncertain Whether or not this classic story that planetary magnetic field to protect a planet Prevent the solar wind from blowing away the atmosphere. I think that's Uncertain right now. I think Maven's actually shook that up So which is a surprising thing because we kind of expected when we went there that that would alter it So what I'm trying to to lead up to to answer your question about how we would get to habitability there I certainly don't think it's true that we necessarily need a strong planetary magnetic field to to send astronauts to mars In fact, I know that for sure. We don't need a planetary magnetic field for them to go there They need to be protected from the radiation that's there But uh, uh, we're not going to get a planetary magnetic field to do that anytime And within hundreds or thousands years that technology is beyond us and we don't need it We can protect our astronauts from frame for radiation in other ways. Um, so I think our Maven science is helping us to understand how planets work better, but I don't think it's directly Helps or hurts the chances of putting astronauts there What we really need are the ability to prospect for resources If we're thinking of like long-term habitation and sizable colonies or sizable settlements such as work settlements Because it's one thing to have a few astronauts there and to just go and carry your own resources with you But like if you actually want to have lots of people there, you got to make sure you have lots of water available to you And we just don't know how much water there is. I mean, we know there's ice But like where is it and like, you know, so we would have to definitely start to identify Um Settlement sized resources that we're going to have a long-term presence there Very cool. Um, so kind of Wrapping all of this up and getting your why which is something we really try to to do when we're speaking to, you know Folks like you who are just so full of so much information and so much knowledge So can we get your opinion on why is this all important? I mean, yeah, as you said, like we're maybe not shifting paradigms But we're not taking them as you know absolute truth anymore and the same thing with like, you know, even with I know there's going to be a lot of textbooks They're going to have to redraw their diagrams of jupiter because every diagram I've seen has indicated some sort of rocky iron core So why in your again in your opinion, why is this all important? Why do you personally? Why did you dedicate your career to these uh fields? Fields get it like magnetic. Sorry Yeah, that's good. Yeah, I didn't even get the pun at first It was for me personally when I started uh, it was about exploration. Um, so What I mean by is when I was a kid I wanted to Have adventures and go exploring cool places and clearly the adventures are happening in space, right? Because you can go be a Jedi in space That's a pretty awesome adventure and you can go be a barzoumian Prince and and you know fight dastardly villains and rescue princesses in space. Okay, that's awesome That's a great adventure, but that's in space too. So let's go and have adventures in space So that I mean that's Definitely where it all started for me is wanting to have adventures and have exploration And as of course as I got older, uh, I realized I probably wasn't going to be rescued a lot of martian princesses Wasn't necessarily going to become a jedi But I I also fortunately found out that when in science then what you can do is you can explore space But you also learn how the world works at the same time And so it's a way of indirectly exploring as well. And so that seemed like a really powerful combination to me um and so That's how I ended up here is is I wanted to explore space like if I had to be like if if I'd had to become uh get my schooling in um And I don't know english or I mean, I would say took english, but uh, if I I didn't what I'm trying to say is I didn't become decide that I wanted to become a physicist And therefore I will explore space. It was the other way around It was I wanted to explore space and the tool with which we used to explore space is physics and math So I was like great no problem physics math. It's fun. It's interesting. I'll learn that stuff so that I can explore space So that's what I wanted to do That's amazing. So you basically reverse engineered being a jedi essentially Well, something like that. I'm not sure, you know, my uh, uh, my abilities with the force were quite the same That I thought they would be when I was six, but I think you underestimate yourself young padawan Um, he just set himself the right mission As dungeon master. There you go. There it is All right. Well, um, dr. Jared, I I'm just gonna call you jared jared. Thank you so much for Spending your saturday afternoon with us. Um, certainly I got a whole lot of out of this interview and it seems like the chat room is just going absolute crazy Sorry, we couldn't get to every single one of your questions but nonetheless, you were just a treasure trove of fascinating information And um, certainly inspiring on top of that. So again, thank you for joining us Before we say our official goodbyes, of course This is the portion of the show where we'd like to give a nice little heartfelt welcome or thank you to Our citizens. Um, these are the folks who make the show possible like the escape velocity citizens here And what they do is they contribute a certain amount of money per month on patreon.com Slash t m r o as we go through these slides You'll notice the font gets smaller and the names get more plentiful and that is because There is a tier for everyone even my names up there somewhere Yes, so thank you again for making the show possible. There it is. I love it Great wall of names. Um, and again, if you're interested in contributing to the show Yes, you can contribute monetarily on patreon.com slash t m r o or as I've said before you can contribute emotionally or just um You know like things like things you could smash that like button You could subscribe to the channel share us to all your friends and fam Have us on uh at the dinner table when you're all sitting and Anyways, um what i'm trying to say is thank you. Um continue tuning in we will see you next Saturday and we hope you all have a lovely week Goodbye