 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. It's one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, so you must be watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. Every Monday we try to bring you some exciting results from the Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology at UH Manoa, but today we've got a little bit different show because my guest today is going to talk with me about the recent Lunar and Planetary Science conference, which was held last month in March in Houston, Texas. This is an annual gathering of about 2,000 researchers, and basically they cover a whole variety of the recent discoveries. So let me welcome to the show Dr. David Trang, who is a post-doctoral fellow within HIGEP. You've been on the show before, David, so thank you for coming back again. Thank you for having me. And David and I went to the same conference, and what we're trying to do today is basically review some of the highlights. You attended some of the meetings which I missed, I attended some of the meetings which you missed. So we want to have a conversation today, David, about what exactly you found interesting. And of course, one of the real things, fabulous planetary exploration, a ton of really exciting images. So first of all, what did you think of the conference? Oh, the conference is always a great time. Some people I have kind of put it in a way is like, oh, it's kind of like a mini reunion. Did you see like everyone that you worked with, your friends, and you talk personally, but also you talk science, you find out what they're doing, and then you guys catch up and also talk about like new collaboration ideas and such. And it's such a, I absolutely love it. Yeah, I know what you mean. I've been going to this conference since 1979. So it really is like homecoming week. And you sort of see the graduate students who become postdocs, who become faculty, who have their own students, as well as, of course, enjoy some of the really exciting advances in planetary exploration with all of the recent NASA missions as well as the European Space Agency. But the new collaborations is something also really important, isn't it? Oh, for sure. It's every time I go there, when I get there, you know, it's always, you just sit in these talks and you learn about everything that people are doing. And you just, and then somehow these light bulbs just go off in your head. And you're like, oh, my God, that's a great idea. I can connect my work and their work. And then it just kind of comes together. Or you're like, oh, there's kind of something that I could do to fill in the gap that this person's missing. I'm going to go work on that. So it's a great place to come up with ideas. And I always have 10 ideas jotted down by then. And I mentioned earlier, about 2,000 people attended the conference. But what kind of disciplines would be represented there? You mean like everything, like the different fields? What fields? I mean, you always, you have everything from geology to people who work on geophysics, so everything on the surface to the interior. And you have people working on dynamics. And it's just amazingly great. And then, of course, there are some people who work at the moon, or they are out of solar system. Yeah, and I like that there's these different groups. You have the moon people, and then you have the airless bodies, like Mercury and asteroid, Mars, yeah. And then you have the people who just work on the outer solar system. So like Saturn and the moons of Saturn, the moons of Jupiter, Pluto, you know, that's great. It's a lot of different groups, but we all tend to come together. Well, as I said at the start of the show, I found one of the great things about last month's conference were all the wonderful images. So maybe if we can just move to the first image, here's a smallsboard for this show of just spectacular scenes. Can you tell the viewers what it is we're actually looking at right now? Well, it looks like we're looking at images that are coming back from this mission called Juno. Juno is a Jupiter orbiter. Its objective is to kind of learn about the atmospherics of Jupiter. So what we're looking at is this beautiful image of the clouds above Jupiter. And of course, this is a real image. It's not computer-generated, although I would understand that some of the colors are computer-enhanced. Right, yeah. So, I mean, if you were at Jupiter, you wouldn't see exactly this, but... You'd be dead for a minute. Yeah, maybe, yeah. But you wouldn't see these nice, vibrant colors, you know, that kind of comes from the camera and kind of boosting these colors out. And we do that just to help, you know, to understand what we're seeing and what's actually there. Right. And I know that you and I are not atmospheric scientists. So maybe we should go on to the next image, because they're absolutely stunning. I hope that the viewers can recognize this planet, which is Saturn. Tell us a little bit about Saturn and its rings here. This is from Cassini. I think that's one of the things that we should appreciate is Cassini ended its mission, I think, last year. So at LPSC, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, we got an overview of everything that we've learned from the Cassini mission. So it brought back all these beautiful images, and we've learned a lot about the rings, and we've learned a lot about the Saturn and their moons themselves, which... For example, one of the cool things that I've learned about the rings is that it's about 200 million years old. It's very, very young. That means dinosaurs were roaming Earth. All right. You open the Pandora's Boat there. How do you know that the rings of Saturn are 200 million years old? Well, I think they use brightness as what they use to understand. I should at least note that I'm not a Saturn person, but I surely do love and appreciate the work that comes out of there, and I really enjoy... But I've learned from them, so I'm kind of paraphrasing from what I've learned. But I believe it's the brightness and how quickly it darkens. Because what I heard was that, basically, if they were as old as the solar system, the amount of dust that's still within the solar system would have darkened each of the rings. So are they continually being renewed, you know? I sort of... You say you're not a Saturn, but you're an Umi. But again, we can enjoy some of these. For the most part, most of the ring is not being renewed, for the very main part of it. And they've said, is it going to dissipate anytime soon? The answer is no, not in our lifetime, not in our kids' lifetime. So it'll be there for a while, or at least a very long time. But there's only one... There's at least one ring that we know of, or one of the main rings, which is called the E-ring, which is being renewed. Basically, you have this moon Enceladus. It's shooting out these plumes of ice and it's creating... And it's actually contributing to the ring, which is... I think we'll see an image of Enceladus in a few slides time. But let's go on to the next one, because I think that's also another Saturnian ring image. But this looks quite different. Do you know what this actually shows? Yeah, I think so. This is an eclipse, basically, with Saturn in front of the sun. And what it's really showing is the ring system a lot better. So the outside, that very fuzzy, the furthest ring, is that E-ring that's coming from Enceladus. What's really cool is that you can see that it's bright on one side or on two of the sides. So on the very top of this and the south of Saturn, you can see that it's really bright there. And that's where Enceladus is the most closest to Saturn and the most furthest. And that's where it kind of tells you when is it most active. It's more related to its orbit. And to remind the viewer, Saturn is much larger than the Earth, although much lower density could float if you had a big enough bucket of water, for example. And so we're seeing a different aspect of the structure of the rings, because, in essence, it's backlit. And the darker parts, they are genuine gaps. So if you were looking with a much finer telescope, you could actually see stars passing behind it. And at least at this resolution, there's a little white dot towards the left-hand side of the screen. Is that a moon or is that a star? I believe so. I can't see in this picture. Oh, OK. Well, I'll tell you. I think it's one of the Saturnians. Oh, OK. Now, you mentioned some of the moons. I think the next slide will also show us another view of the rings, right? These are amazing. Again, remind the viewers, these are real photographs. These are not computer generated, even though they're computer enhanced. What is it we're looking at here? So this is as Cassini was moving through the rings. What you can see here is that, on the top and the bottom, these are actual part of the rings. So the rings are actually made of all these small particles, about centimeters to meter size. Of about 90% of it is ice, water ice. So what you're seeing in the middle is you're seeing one of these moons. And they're pretty much rubble piles. And as it moves across, you can see that its gravity from this moon is actually affecting the ring and causing these beautiful wave patterns. So the wave on the left-hand side of the middle of the screen is actually due to the gravity of the moon in orbit around Saturn within the rings. And it's dragging these fine particles. Do you know how thick some of the rings are themselves? I don't recall how big the actual rings are between gaps. Is that what you mean? No, the thickness. Oh, I don't remember how thick it was. Do you remember? I've heard it's sort of less than 100 meters or something. I saw one of the presentations where they had right at equinox, Saturn had its rings perpendicular to the sun. And it was casting these shadows of parts of the ring plane itself was seen in sort of three dimensions. And they were able to infer that the thickness of the rings was of the order of a few hundred meters. And yet the hundreds, if not thousands of kilometers across the moon are really quite magnificent. Oh yeah, it's amazing. And I think they said it was because of the slightly elliptical orbit or the orbit of the moon itself. It's a little bit is not like within the same plane as the ring. So it's really interesting that you can see some structure inside somebody who studies the orbital dynamics. We've had a field day on that. Let's look at another side. These are so pretty. He wants to take a look at this one. This is again a little reminder. This is a real image. Yeah. And to me, this looks like you've got Saturn's rings running from left all the way out towards the center. But you've got three moons here. Right. Do you know what the moons are? I'd rather not throw out the gas, but I'll let you take it away. OK, well, my guess and it purely is a guess. The large one is Titan, OK? And I infer it's Titan simply because we can't see the surface and Titan has an atmosphere twice as thick as the Earth's atmosphere. If we can go back to the previous slide, we will be able to see not that one either, we'll be able to see that we've got. There we go. A number of moons. The middle size one, I think, is in Salatus. It looks like so with those tiger stripes. Yeah. Yeah. And I've got no idea at all what the small little white dot is just to the right of the green plane. But Saturn has a lot of moons and it's it's, you know, there's there's not pneumatics to memorize them, but some of the small ones. I believe it's like 65 different moons that have been discovered. And Cassini, which was in orbit between 2005 and 2017, more than doubled the number of moons which we actually recognize around Saturn. So if you were studying the interaction between the moons and the Saturn's ring, that would be a wonderful place to go. But we're getting close to the mid-show break, David. When we come back, you can actually start quizzing me about some of the sessions which I attended. So in the interim, let me just remind our viewers, you are watching Think Tech Hawaii research in Manila. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And my guest today is Dr. David Trang. And David and I are reminiscing about the 49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference, which was held in Houston last month. So we'll be back in about a minute's time. So see you then. Hello, everyone. I'm DeSoto Brown, the co-host of Human Humane Architecture, which is seen on Think Tech Hawaii every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. And with the show's host, Martin Desbang, we discuss architecture here in the Hawaiian Islands and how it not only affects the way we live, but other aspects of our life, not only here in Hawaii, but internationally as well. So join us for Human Humane Architecture every other Tuesday at 4 p.m. on Think Tech Hawaii. Hi, everyone. I'm Andrea Gabrieli, the host for Young Talent's Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii, with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talent's Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. And welcome back to Think Tech Hawaii's Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And this week I'm talking to Dr. David Trang, who is a post-doctoral researcher within HIGP. And we're reminiscing about last month's 49th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference held in Houston, Texas. So I said we're going to go on to the sessions, which I attended, but there's one image, David, that I really want our viewers to see again. So if we can go to the next image, and this is of the nucleus of a comet, right? Tell us a little bit about. This is a 67P. This was visited by the European Space Agency mission called Rosetta. And what they tried to do was they tried to put a lander here. And then with the actual orbiter, they actually took a lot of images. We've learned a great deal from Rosetta. It's the images are beautiful. There's so much change that occurs as it approaches the sun. And they have images and documented like the changes over time. And they actually showed like little animations. And you're like, wow, you know, you see dust moving around. It's all the changes. Is it we all know the tail of a comet, for example? Is that the kind of thing they're recognizing? Because here we're seeing an object that's about half the size of a Wahoo. So it's quite small. What changes can you see on the surface? Yeah, you can actually see dust moving moving across. And I think you've you've mentioned you've seen dunes. I've seen those. Have they seen the moving once in a while? Yes. And they've also seen landslides and all right. And cliffs, cliffs falling. Yeah. But one of the ones I really enjoyed was just seeing these little pits just opening up and it's just amazing because what you're having is just volatile, just escaping on some of them. And these pits are opening. It's just it's just it's like we're seeing geology and action, something that's not very common on earth. You know, it's not you don't see an action quite frequently like on this comet. It's just all happening so quickly and so fast. And one of the things which I found really exciting at the conference was there's a proposal for NASA to send another spacecraft back to the same comet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. There's the idea of going back and doing a sample return. I think we're kind of starting moving towards the age of, hey, you know, we've got all these images. Let's move on to imaging and getting the samples back. Kind of like what we're doing with Osiris Rex trying to get a sample. There we have Hayabusa, too, trying to get a sample from an asteroid. So we're and then now, you know, NASA is pushing the whole idea of getting samples from the moon, Mars. So it's we're kind of moving into the age of sample return. And within the Hawaii Institute of Physics and Planetology, we've got some of the really best equipment transmission, electron, microscope, iron, micro probe, various other hardware that really could help the university be one of the leaders, right? Yeah, for sure. And we have some of the greatest leaders in our in our department our institute that actually do, you know, push the limit of what we understand, including yourself, because you're a science participating scientist on the other side. Very good. All right. So let's change gears. You can start asking me about some of the things which I saw, because although it was a single science conference there of like six concurrent sessions, you can't attend everything. It's been most of your time out in the hallway catching up on news and planning new research. So if we go to the next slide, I can tell you a little bit about this one. Oh, yeah. So you've gone to the lunar session. You Jack Schmidt was there. Jack Schmidt and for the audience, the viewers, Jack Schmidt, 12th person to walk on the moon, the only geologist. What I really like him and here he is along with Gene Cernan, they landed in this place called Torres Letro Valley. And what is really fantastic is that Jack still attends the Lunar Science Conference because he's an interested geologist. Yeah. And you may have been in the same place at the time when he gave his talk, but he's got this wonderful sort of saying where somebody is proposing a new idea about, say, the formation of one of the craters at Torres Letro. And he is saying, well, it didn't look like that when I was there. And I mean, it's just so disarming sort of thing. But here's the the lunar roving vehicle and the descent module. But I want to show you the next picture because there really has been a sort of a revolution in terms of our understanding of the landing site. So if we can go to the next slide, what we'll see. Here we've got an orbital view of the landing site. And back in December of 1972, when the mission took place, the astronauts Schmidt and Cernan were able to drive in that rover three different times. So they went out on three extra vehicular activities or EVAs. And these show how far they went. And sometimes they went like 15 kilometers around. And we've got some of our former graduate students, Mark Robinson, for example, took this picture with the camera he built to put on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. And there's this synergy between what Jack Schmidt saw at the time, what you can see from orbit now, as well as what people, including Jeff Taylor at the university, are understanding about the patrology or the chemistry of the rocks. So 45 years after this mission, hearing from the astronaut who made the actual observation absolutely incredible sort of thing. Oh, yeah. And I think what's interesting is that you know, he always gives the first talk and when he's there, he's always doing new science, new work on the Apollo 7 site. Like he didn't just stop doing science when he came back from the moon. He's still going today and he's still producing new stuff. In fact, he got an entire session to himself. What did you and you attended that session? Some of it, yes. Yeah, I got lost when they were talking about the patrology or the chemistry of the rocks. So I went off and did something else. But, you know, there was a lot of interest. And yes, I also heard that, you know, they are trying to develop new ways of analyzing sub-samples from that particular mission, whether it's the soil or the regolith or whether it's some of the rocks and what the age differences might mean in terms of the regional geology. So it's really very, very interesting. Oh, yeah, very. And it's I think it's also incredible that Jack still attends and it's great for all young scientists, you know, graduate students and undergraduates when they come to this and they're like, oh, my gosh, a real Apollo astronaut is here presenting science. And after the session, you see these kids all going up, running for pictures. And indeed, and it's a great inspiration to still have him. One of our former guests, Casey Hannibal, for example, she's a graduate student at the university. And she was like with these other students in awe. She wants to be an astronaut talking to an Apollo astronaut. Yeah, it's really something. Yeah, it's it's a wonderful experience to meet somebody who's been there. Yeah, it's also really weird because, you know, it's not a very everyday occurrence. Been there, done that sort of thing. Hopefully we'll have more astronauts going back to the moon very soon. We've got a wonderful backdrop here, but let's go on to the next slide, which is also the same backdrop. And let me tell you some of the results from the Mars rover. Yeah, I've completely missed those sessions. One of the rovers opportunity landed on Mars, January 25th, 2004. It is still going. It has driven 46 kilometers. This isn't from the opportunity landing site. This is Gale Crater, where the other rover for curiosity is. But where's Matt Damon? Or Mark Watney or whatever. Here we're seeing across about 30 kilometers towards the rim of this big crater called Gale. And so the geology that the rovers are showing us has gone way beyond, say, what we were able to obtain from orbit. That they're doing a lot of really detailed sampling of various types of minerals that are doing some sedimentology because this particular the floor of this crater used to be a lake. And so you've got all these sediments. But the curiosity rover, which took this picture, has been operating for over 2000 days now. So it hasn't caught up with opportunity, but which has done over 5000 days. But nevertheless, in the foreground, we've got some hematite rich rocks, which is what we're seeing in the black area. But it's these lakes. So we're getting a completely new understanding of what the climate of Mars was like. Perhaps three and a half, 3.5, 3.6 billion years ago. So is the rover still climbing up the mountain? Is that it's still a continued objective? You say still. As a Martian geologist, I'm quite frustrated because it's not driving faster than that hill. It's located within this crater called Gale. There's this big five kilometer high mountain. And we really want to understand what that mountain is made of. And you can only tell by being there. It hasn't got there after five years of driving, but it will get there within the next year or two. Opportunity rover, the other side of the planet in the Sinus Meridiani is still driving like crazy. It's going down gullies. It's going across the floor. It's been exploring the eroded rim of an old meteorite crater that might be four billion years old. And it's just like doing field geology. So each of the rovers have different types of instruments on board. Curiosity is spending a lot more time drilling into the rocks, trying to better understand what the chemistry is. Whereas opportunity, which is still basically just sort of late 1990s technology. Now it's basically running just with the cameras. And so they're going like crazy. Some of these amazing places. And it's amazing that it exceeded its life by years. I mean, it was designed to work on Mars for 90 days. Yeah. Well, that's I think we're beyond that. Over five thousand days. Wow. And so, yeah, the engineers who built that particular spacecraft really should be congratulated. And also the science team. They're called Steve Squires. They've just done a fabulous job with opportunity. And the sister rover called Spirit, that survived over seven years. So anyway, as the viewers hopefully can tell, there was so much which we saw. We haven't even got to the end of the slides. Unfortunately, we've got to the end of the show. So let me just remind you, you've been watching Think Tech Hawaii Research in Manoa. I'm your host, Pete McGinnis-Mark. And I've been having the conversation today with Dr. David Trang, who is a postdoctoral researcher about just a fraction of the things which we found of interest in the conference. David, thank you very much for joining me in this conversation. It's always a pleasure to have you on the show. And hopefully we can invite you back some later time. So anyway, thank you for watching and we'll be back next Monday. So please stay tuned then. Goodbye for now.