Why It Matters: Charles Elachi in Conversation with Karen R. Lawrence

[Music] [Music] thank you welcome to the Huntington and to our

program why it matters a conversation with Charles elachi I'm Karen Lawrence president of the Huntington and it's

great to almost see all of you here um about six months ago I asked Charles elachi to be my guest on our

program why it matters and I was delighted that he agreed to do it for this particular program in our series

the it in why it matters is the exploration of space why it matters and how it fuels

both our knowledge and our imaginations as the time for the event Drew nearer I kind of realized with

shagrin that our date overlapped with the scheduled launch of uh the jet propulsion Labs or jpl's

Europa Clipper which was scheduled for tomorrow October 10th and I asked Charles if he needed to reschedule I called and said do we need to reschedule

so you can go to Florida and he said no cuz he wasn't going and when I asked why this man of

science said to me because whenever I go they postpone the launch but he did add that the one time that didn't happen was when Valerie

elachi his wife accompanied him and then the launch went off [Music] flawlessly so I'm sure most of you have

heard that the launch scheduled for tomorrow has been postponed but it is because of hurricane

Milton and not Charles elot so I'm very delighted and we're very delighted that Charles and Valerie are here tonight and I'm also glad to say

that Tom rosenbom president of Caltech who had planned to be at the launch until it was postponed is also here in the audience so welcome but this program

is particularly timely not only because of that launch uh because I thought that Charles elachi

the esteemed former director of JPL and a Huntington Board of Governor would be the perfect guest for this

program this fall during the hugely ambitious Getty sponsored art event which is focused on the theme Art and

Science Collide and I think yeah [Applause] good I think many of you know that over

70 institutions in Southern California are participating including JPL and the Huntington and um I would be errant if I

did urge you to go see our two exhibitions here uh at the Huntington one in the Boon and one in the Chinese Garden when you have time if you haven't seen it

already some of you may know that not only has Charles elachi received received a myriad of honors from the scientific Community the International

Community including the French Leon donur but he's also the inaugural recipient of the Pasadena Arts Council

award for arts and science which uh was given in 2012 and in accepting the award he said Pasadena has always been distinguished

by a very strong intersection of science science and art in our local but world renowned institutions I'm honored to

play a role in this longstanding tradition so tonight I'm looking forward to speaking with Charles elachi about

all of the above and we hope that you as members of the audience also participate we're passing out note cards and we

really ask that you uh fill them out with a question that comes up as you're listening to the discussion we're fond

of saying at the Huntington cure we are cultivating curiosity I think curiosity fuels all of our institutions represented in this audience so don't

hold back with your questions I want to thank two important people who have helped me a lot with this program Alice

Sai director of special projects and in institutional planning and railene Garza senior coordinator for special projects both in the president's office I'm

grateful to them and um folks will be collecting cards near the end of our conversation uh and we'll pass them up to us with your questions so now it's

time would you help me welcome Charles elachi I like your T-shirt as I said we're delighted to have you here and I'm going to turn over

this part of the program well first let me say thank you for inviting me and I thought what I'm going to start doing and thank you all for coming it's a

gentleman here he sat in the front row with a JPL t-shirt you know uh I thought what I'm going to start doing to kind of warm you up a little

bit I'm going to show you a little bit about what it plays JPL which is a division of calch not too far from here uh what are the amazing things that are

happening they're on your behalf you know basically exploring the Universe on your behalf and some of you probably are already wondering what does Leonardo

have to do that's not Leonardo DiCaprio that's Leonardo D Vinci what does he have to do with Mars exploration so you'll hear that story and the reason I

like always to include Leonardo because he was a perfect example of somebody who crossed between science and technology

and art you know he was an amazing person 500 years ago so what I'm going to do to to get you all warmed up uh this is a mission

this is a what we call the high Bay at JPL now some of you might know but maybe not all of you that literally for the

last 20 years we have had Rovers on Mars exploring day in Day Out 24 hours a day or being controlled you know from JPL 20

years on another planet when you think about it and this is a picture of the latest Rover it is about the size of a large

SUV and the Big Challenge is how do you land it on another planet because when we are coming in we are coming at speed

of 13,000 mph as we arrive to the top of the atmosphere to give you a perspective that's like going from here San Francisco in less than 2

minutes and the energy you know in that capsule you know coming in is basically the equivalent of 18,000 race cars going

at full speed and we have about 5 to 7 minutes to basically slow down and land Softly on the surface so we call it the 7 Minutes of

Terror because literally it's Terror you know because we have hundreds of events have to happen you know and they all have to happen correctly to land safely

if only one of them doesn't work then we crash on Sur and you cannot joystick it because it takes about 5 to 10 minutes for the

signal to come from Mars down to earth so by the time it arrived to the top of the atmosphere when we receive the signal it has already landed or crashed

hopefully landed you know on the surface so I'm going to take you to the Mission Control Center at JPL and I would suggest all of you to go and visit I mean there are Public tours it is an

amazing place because you stay stand there and you are seeing data coming from spacecraft on Mars from Voyager from Cassini which is around Saturn as

you are standing there and I used to call it the center of the universe because it's really the center of the universe so I'm going to take you to the

day when we landed the latest Rover and you are going to see exactly what was happening and we had cameras all over the Lander which will show you the

background what was all the different event which were happening on it and uh we're going to start it here and Fly Right maneuver where the spacecraft will

jettison the entry balance masses in preparation for parachute deploy and over to give Tak it over and we put the heat shield in front of it and a back

shell which have a parachute so now you are see pictures from the deployment of the parachute and what seeing in the background this is

real Mars this was not done in Hollywood this is actually actual data which was I mean actual images and then we drop the heat shield as we are slowing

down Mar in the background and the heat sheld has been separated whenever you will be traveling to Mars sometime in the next 20 years that's exactly what you will see and that's B this is not

Mojave this is actually Mars in the back km above the surface now you'll see it looks like it's wobbling well we are down on a parachute

so as you are coming down it's wobbling but more important we want to land in a very specific place so as we are coming

down there is autonomous software which kind of moves the Lander so we end landing at the right at the right location on the ground current velocity

is about 100 m second you can't keep thef first is continuing to descend on the parachute we are coming up on the initialization of terrain relative

navigation and subsequently the priming of the landing engines our current velocity is about 90 m per second at an altitude of 4.2

km now you could imagine the tension in the mission control center because these people have worked on it for like 10 years proded everything depends on these five minutes relative navigation you

know what's going to happen TPA is nominal we have timing of the landing engines and Mars has features very

similar to Earth like in desert area you see Sand Dune you see craters it has Dry River beds it looks very much like North

Africa or the move move desert that's why we interested in exploring it see and an altitude of about K off the

surface of Mars here and safety Bravo and then when we get to about 100 ft we fire the engin to slow us down and then we slowly Sky cran the over down to the

surface so it's like Sky craning your SUV down to the surface we have started our constant velocity now you see the Jets of the rocket

up and as you look to the left at the bottom you'll see dangling sorry at the yeah at the bottom dangling are over down to the surface 20 M and the one at

the top is looking up from the from the one which was hovering and once we touch the surface we cut that cord and we are

on the surface Tango Delta tat confirmed perseverance safely on the surface of Mars ready to begin seeking the sand of past

life look at these young people you know have really worked I mean it's an amazing group of scientists and Engineers I call them explorers at JPL

now usually after we land one of the first thing we do it's like when you get a new iPhone you take a selfie and you send it to your mom and say mom look how how

good I look so that's exactly what the Rover does it had an arm at the end of it there is a camera and the arm was extended and took picture of it so we

can see that everything seems that have work worked worked perfectly well and this Rover specifically has been driving around for 4 years but we have another

Rover we have two of them running now uh which have been there for 10 years and couple other Rover which were there even even before that

time now one big thing we did on on this latest mission is we added a little helicopter this is the first time ever a helicopter is flown or any airplane is

slown on another planet this is the right Brothers moment 100 years later now you'd say what's a big deal I have it drone I fly it all the time the

big deal is the pressure on Mars is 1% of the pressure on Earth so that's a equivalent of flying a helicopter at about 100,000 ft that three time higher

than wor jet airplanes actually fly nobody has ever done that you know before so we had to develop all the electronics the blades the cameras the

communic all within about 1 and A2 kog you know to be able to do and it did come back and landed uh and the challenge for the landing again because

of the delay in the signal the helicopter has to figure out where it's going to land at a safe place where there are no rocks so it doesn't tilt or

and we were expecting it to work like five times it worked 75 times you know on the Sur and then after it actually did tilt and

break one uh one blade uh even that it's still working but it's not flying so this was an amazing accomplishment which happened a couple of years

ago now why Leonardo before we landed curiosity not the latest one but the previous one and actually before we launched it uh I was

in Milan at a conference I get this email from a reporter who have regularly interviewed me at JPL saying well the

director of the Royal Library of Turin would like to invite you to visit and if you come here you will be able to see Leonardo D Vinci codex of flight I said

wow that's you know that would be amazing if I can see it so I said okay it's a 1hour drive by train so I went there they take me to the Vault you know and there were guards with guns you know

for it because that's where they have all the original of Leonardo D Vinci they hand me this gloves and they pull the Codex of flight and say you can go

through it and you could imagine I mean I I was almost blown away I mean because I'll be going through the pages that Leonardo actually drew things you know

on 500 years ago more than 500 years ago and I was taken back by the different pictures I saw on the left is

a helicopter we built at JPL on the right is a Leonardo sketch of a helicopter look at this thing on the right is our Lander in the capsule on

the left is a sketch now Leonardo was not drawing Landers from Mars but he was doing basically like tanks for attacking you know fortresses how do you protect

the soldiers on them and look at this one this is I mean it looked like it was copied you know from him so it wasn't there right

maybe maybe he was smarter than we thought so anyway I was after we the the director took me for lunch and I said there must be something for them to let

me actually do that so he said well Charles if we scan the Codex of flight and put it on its ship would you be willing to put it on the Rover which is

going to Mars and that's actually what happened so they send us a little chip which has scanned all the Codex of FL and we put it on the R so now we can say

that Leonardo codex of flight is on is uh is on Mars and we'll be there for thousands of [Music] years now you're going to upload more

for the next I was chatting with Karen so you know Karen maybe for the next Lander we ought to scan some of the documents at the Huntington some of your most valuable and put that ship on the

Lander on Mars so we can say Huntington has a branch you know on another I'm serious we have to explore that talk with Tom rosenbom and Lori

lashan for the next Lander and this is one of my favorite picture people my age remember the footprint on the left that Neil

Armstrong footprint on the Moon I mean that's something which inspired Generations in the in the late 60s about that we can actually go to the moon the

one on the right is the Rover wheel footprint on the surface of Mars so that kind of show you the advances that we have done on your behalf you know over

the last 4050 years now one story I always like to tell because people always ask me when I give talks how much did these Rover cost and you know I'm

I'm an honest person I want to tell the truth so I came up with Z I tell them well it cost every American citizen one hamburger and people look I say wow

that's the kind of thing we want spend our money on well but you take one hamburger $10 multiply it by$ 350 million people it's it's 3 and A2

billion which is the cost but when you put of the Rover but when you put it in that perspective then people will say wow this is really worse to spend our

taxpayer you know money on now the next big leap that we are doing is to send the spacecraft to go to Europa that's a satellite of Jupiter

which is made all of ice we think there is an ocean below that ice and what we want to do with this mission is take detailed images sounds Through The Eyes

see how thick it is so in the future we can put a Lander drill our way through the ice and put a submarine to see if there is any life in that ocean I was

going to tell you we're launching this tomorrow morning at 9:00 but the hurricane you know came by so that launch is delayed now until Sunday you

know most of the team is at the cape but because of the wind and so on we're not going to be launching it until Sunday so now it will take 6 years to get there so

it will get there in 203 the solar system is pretty big uh so Karen uh make sure you in invite me in 6 years to come and give another talk and

I'll show you the results see what happens yeah so that so I've seen the these clips a couple of times and they're amazing and it's hard to know

where to where to start but um and I hope we do get to NASA's budget at some point because it's actually declined instead of keeping up with what it

should be but let me not start there your the pictures of the RO and the expeditions to Mars really

convey Incredible the Incredible preparation you said over a decade uh for launch and landing and the incredible

riskiness of the landing and we know that the Europa Clipper has been postponed for reasons of

weather I was in living in Utah in 1986 uh when the Challenger tragedy

occurred and um a Utah company had when investigation showed that the O-rings um produced by a Utah company

Morton thol were responsible um and that Engineers had uh some Engineers had been warned about it

and I I mentioned this a very different context but I read in the New York Times last month that Europa Clipper had some

problems with transistors that many transistors on the Clipper for many systems um had some fatal flaws and the scientists

discovered that um so I I like you to tell what happened but I have two questions how do

you even think of quality control in a project of that magnitude over a decade especially when you're not making all

the parts um and then you know maybe as as important how do you create a culture at JPL where if someone

identifies a problem which did happen with the Clipper that the news is passed on to somebody who can do something about it before it's too late well let

me put it in perspective every time you are doing exploration it's a risky endeavor because you are exploring something new you are exploring something which has never been done you are developing

something which have never been done before and that's even particularly risky in the space business you just have to watch a launch effectively you

have a controlled explosion that you are doing that to basic to to launch that you know my wife and I saw you know the launch of the shuttle it almost blows

you away you know we were fairly close to it so anytime you do exploration not only space space illustrate it more you are taking a risk so a key challenge is how do you

mitigate that risk how do you train the people to make sure we address and express every aspect of that risk and we do a lot of design a lot of testing

that's why I call the people at JPL Explorer because are some of the most brilliant people that we bring to work together as a team to develop this

extremely complex you know Machinery uh and every time every once in a while we are aware that there might be failure one of my favorite quotes I'm modifying

it a little bit is from Teddy Rosevelt he said it's far better to DARE Mighty things even though checkered by

failure than to sit down in the Twilight that knows neither the victory nor defeat I mean anytime I mean we as a human we want we have been doing Mighty

things not only in space you do the same thing in music you do some the same thing in any exploration and you do take a risk otherwise you don't Advance on

doing that the key thing is to really make sure you do your homework and then if there is a failure to learn from it not to shy away from doing that and

that's the philosophy we have at JPL I mean I'll tell you a personal story a couple of months before I became the director

in1 we had had a failure we crashed a spacecraft on the surface of Mars and when I became director a senior staff at Nasa headquarter said who are you going

to fire I told I'm not going to fire anybody these are the best people in the world uh we encourag them to to push the

limit they took a risk and then you know there was something that they missed and matter of fact I'm planning to appoint the head of the mission which crashed to

be the the project manager on curiosity and we learned from it and basically we got all the successes you know that that we had in here now

admittedly when we have humans like the shuttle you gave as an example it's a little bit more you know dramatic but even then uh

you know when we started developing airplanes and there were test pilots there were many accidents and that's how we evolve to where we see today you

don't think twice about going to La and getting on an airplane to do that that's basically the legacy of a lot of people and lots of accident you know which

happened in the past now let me come back specifically to to the question yes it turned out that Europa which is in orbit around Jupiter uh is a

very heavy radiation environment as a matter of fact as just for illustrative purpose basically it's the same radiation if I take my iPhone throw it

inside the nuclear reactor and the iPhone has still to work so that's a challenge we were facing and the people at JPL actually did very serious homework they worked with companies

about doing what we call radiation hardened you know electronic parts they were put inside a shield inside a a cover on it and then what happened 5

months ago while we were already ready to laun to go to the launch uh some other company was testing some of these detectors or and they failed you know

they didn't sustain the radiation so that of course you could imagine we were really concerned because we had hundreds of these transistors so we went on a

very strong effort to actually test the parts that we have you know or the The Identical part to it and fortunately it turned out that the people did their

homework before and the part we have actually will sustain you know the radiation and you go on every Mission always there is some Panic which happens

5 six months before before the the mission occurs because as I say you know you are doing things for the first time and setback do

happen during your time at JPL you launched and landed three Rovers right a spirit curiosity Spirit opportunity

curiosity and curiosity and curiosity is still active I think launched in 20 in 2012 what um I think many of us

wonder what we can learn what this what your research there and and the findings teach us about how we can be environmental stewards of our own Planet

well the key goal about exploring Mars as I hinted about it earlier we believe that Mars and Earth formed roughly at the same time about 3 plus billion years

ago and at the beginning the environment were very similar and that's why we see what there are old rivers on Mars that they are dry now but then over the

billions of years of evolution somehow Mars got colder faster than Earth and the water either froze or the molecule

were dissociated and the hydrogen evaded so a key question if started like Earth could have life evolved on it and if it

did what kind of life is it based on DNA is it based on carbon you know what kind of Life evolved and if it didn't why not why did life evolve on this planet but

not on this other planet which is very similar it has volcanoes it had dry Rivers it has sand dunes so it's a fundamental question of understanding

how did life start and is our life a unique you know in our solar system or in the universe in general so that's our key Focus now in addition to that we

learned a lot about the environment on Mars you know how the climate has changed over the billion of years uh equally interesting is Venus which is

another mission which is extremely hot because it has a lot of carbon dioxide so if we don't watch how much carbon dioxide we put in the atmosphere we and

might becoming like Venus where life is not sustainable on it so by visiting these different planets you know we actually learn about ourselves and

explore about ourself how we have actually evolved cautionary tale Venus right um in terms of environmental

stewardship though what about what's in elegantly called space junk okay that's number one let me tell you space is very big okay you know so

you have to put a lot of junk you know together but it's becoming a concern you know particularly in Earth's orbit you know because now there is a big trend of putting literally thousands of

satellites you know in orbit basically to run your iPhone so you can have communication you know with the iPhone or to monitor the Earth so few years ago

there was an agreement work through the united nation which says that every time we launch a satellite at the end of its life there should be enough fuel that we

can bring it back and burn it in the Earth's atmosphere so we don't add to all the what's considered junk on it now not all the nations have signed up to it

but us Europe Japan we all signed to it that actually will be doing that um gives me Comfort that that that

that's the case uh I think probably all of us don't understand coming back to Earth the relationship between

JPL NASA Caltech Carnegie Science and we'll throw in the Huntington at a later at a later date can you just give us a

primer of no that's an interesting story related uh that we have in 1936 or around that time there was a group of student working with a

professor at CCH by name of Von Karman and they were mixing chemicals to see which one blows up more you know so you can use them in Rockets while the campus was nervous you know

something like that and few explosions did happen so they were told why don't you go to the AR oo there was nothing there and do your test and we actually

have a picture taken on Halloween day 1936 of these four students sitting down next to few tanks of fuel you know developing rocket and that's how it got

started you know sometime it's amazing what for CCH students can do I mean the professor was there just to supervise them a little bit but it's the kids which did all the work so

anyway it evolved during World War II we built a lot of rockets that's where the jet propulsion lab name came from so we developed the capability for launch

vehicles and then in 1957 Sputnik was launched and again the people I remember it I was a little kid listening to the sound on a radio uh remember that was a

big panic in the US I mean in across the world that here we have the Soviet Union is putting satellite above us so within 3 months after that JPL built and

launched the first American satellite called the Explorer one at that time there was no NASA if you look at the newspaper headline that celtech

satellite goes in orbit I mean we should frame that put it in big signs at celtech shortly after that President Eisenhower you know decided to form a

civilian space agency called NASA so they formed it they looked around the country to see who knows how to spell space you know JPL was one of the places

and I'm told I was not around at that time I was not here that then Caltech sold JPL to NASA for $1 with the arrangement that keltech

continues to manage JPL so today all the JPL employees are CCH employees the facility is owned by the government by NASA the funding comes

from from the government but all the rules and operation and retirement and hiring and firing we follow CCH rules so

it is amazing when you think about it a small private university actually is running the robotic Space Program of the country you know or doing most of the

mission that now there are a few other people you know being involved in it is amazing what CCH can accomplish excuse me is this the only University connected

to NASA's no this is the only Center you know C JPL is the only Center which is run by University all the other NASA centers the other civil servant now doe

has similar arrangement with Los Alamos uh Berkeley lab and a number of lab which are run by the UC system on doing

that but in space JPL is the only NASA Center which is run you know by a private university and Carnegie Science sorry

I'm glad now carnegi is mostly heavily in the astronomy aspect so there are connection like when we do astronomy missions we actually do work with

Carnegie here and celtech does work also with Carnegie so going back to a comment you made when you think about it this padina leada by the way leada claim the

title for JPL padina claim the title for JPL and they fight about who should be claiming JPL it's amazing aming within 5 miles these amazing institution celtech

Carnegie Art Center JPL the Huntington and so it's you know the northern Simon Museum it's amazing

how much intellectual capacity there is within 5 miles you know of that little city that we call pasaden and we're the

Huntington are stewards of that history of uh because we have um a long the Huntington icw um

Institute the history project on the Aerospace industry we have so many of the documents and I think more than I was talking to Bill devil more than 70

oral interviews no I'm delighted that Huntington is keeping because basically Southern California is the Hub of the Aerospace I mean there are many other

places but really this is at the heart of it not only JPL but you have North or gramman you have space X you have Aerospace Corporation not many people

know that the shuttle was actually built in Los Angeles or most of it it was managed by the Johnson Space Center but it was basically built you know in uh in

the Los Angeles area that's why you we have one of the four shuttles is in Los Angeles and there is none in Houston so Texas was not happy you know when NASA

decided to to do one of them here you know in Los Ang that's what it was was mostly belt um I want to shift to Humanities and the Arts and its

relationship to space I know I understand that you created a program at JPL to recruit artists um and and so I I just have a

general question about the relationship the importance the contributions um Da Vinci uh The Poets

you um you're you're quoting you know words that come from uh poets and writers how do you see the role of those artists I mean no question artists play

a major role in communicating to the public what we do but also influencing us uh just to tell you a little story how it started at JPL uh about I think

it was like 15 years ago or 14 when I was director I invited Richard Kosik some of you know him uh he was the president of the art center so I invited

him to visit JPL took him in the high Bay bunny suited him and after we are we were done he said you know Charles you need to have an artist here at JPL to

explain to the public the exciting thing you do here so I tell okay do you have a suggestion he said yeah this guy who was coming with him he's graduating uh

shortly his name is Dan good uh you should hire him so I told Dan good to come to see me the following day and I told then look what I'm going to do I'm

going to give you 6 months if you get the people at JPL excited about your art about displaying things then we'll hire you permanently now there is a group of

a dozen people at JPL of artists who spend full time you know working their displaying to the public you know basically how we do the art how what are

the kind of mission that we are doing and I'll show you not immediately now but a little bit later I'm going to show you some example of what they have done including things which were done here

you know at the Huntington can you sh yeah well let me go first I'm going to go on the astronomy okay one because that comes back okay and and that's something also not many people

appreciate uh well no you mentioned it I think in in some of your comments that you know at CCH one of the founders of CCH his name is hail he was

an astronomer and he had a lot of connection with the Huntington at fact he was a good friend with Mr Huntington he you know here and he was a key driver

behind convincing Mr Huntington to make the Huntington estate basically become what became the Huntington I call it that he badgered Henry Huntington until

Henry Huntington agreed to do and was a a key scientist or key astronomer at JPL and a number of telescope art named

after him so I told Karen I'm going to show you some example of the what I call the paintings of God so these are picture which were taken with the JY web

telescope that's our latest telescope which was launched it was done by the gaed Space Center but the camera was built here at JPL and look at these

pictures look at the beauty of the sky I'm just going to go through them quickly these are real pictures I mean you can take these and display them you

know in any Museum as pieces of art I call them the paintings of God that did that which is at the intersection of science and art because there is a lot of science behind them

but also they are artistically beautiful so what I would recommend to you when you go home don't do it now on your iPhone go and Google best picture

from JY web telescope and you get dozens and dozens of these picture I sit down and spend hours you know watching them and it amazes you what our universe is

this picture corresponds to an area about if you take a dime at the end of your arm that's about the area of the sky that is covered and there are literally thousands of galaxies each one

of them has billions of stars in it so it's an amazing universe that is around us that's what we call you know the the towers of

creation and this is not from the Hub this is one from one of our mission is a picture of Jupiter and the reason I like to show it these are all hurricanes and

it's perfectly timely you know with the problems of the Hurricanes that we had here so by watching Jupiter and the Dynamics of the Hurricanes we can learn

about hurricanes you know here on Earth but it's in amazing picture so before I move whenever you want me to move to the art but I want to

mention something for you which hopefully will Intrigue you uh make sure starting next week Monday or Tuesday go out as the sun sets down and goes just

below the Horizon you are going to see a comet you know in the sky now many of you have seen maybe many comets but this one the last time it visited Earth was

8,000 years ago that was during the neand th I wonder what they want what they thought about it and it will be moving up in the

sky over a period of 2 weeks now now if on the other hand you are in early riser starting November 1st there is another Comet that you will see just Before

Sunrise so plan your thing be in a dark place so you can you can see it with your eye uh with a telescope you can see it even better I thought that's a little curiosity that that could intrig you I

meant to mention also in terms of artists um when you showed the landing uh and perseverance

when that Rover landed where it landed is now called the Octavia E Butler Landing y um and I don't know who NASA I

mean that's the NASA official um name for it and I think many people in the audience know that Octavia Butler was a

um an excellent writer uh called science fiction writer but speculative fiction really fiction about what Alternative

forms of life might be and um and was an amazing gender genre bending writer who unfortunately passed away uh early I

think in her 50s and her archive is at the Huntington but uh people connected and uh to Butler um let us know you know

this was a a really terrific we are very good at naming thanks yeah Spirit opportunity curiosity perseverance

Ingenuity have welln and and um and somebody who really uh had the imagination to think about what might be

um which is inspired by well with that introduction as I told you about this group of artists let me so about I think about 10

years ago I again your during my time at JPL my wife and I were at Zion National Park and we saw this poster which kind

of mimicked what poster were in the 50s and Valerie my wife said you know you had to do a poster for every planet well of course I picked the phone and called immediately Dan Goods who was

the head of the and you know at that time I had the influence being the director I told him Dan this is a picture of this poster you had to have a poster for every planet that being

detected around other stars so this is a set of posters which show what's the artist imagination of what life would

look like on another planet so the one to the left yeah your left is a picture of or their imagination of people on a

planet which is orbiting around two stars or what we call Double Stars so you actually will see two suns in the sky and you see double Shadows you know

on the ground so the so the line is where your Shadow always has company I don't know if you can see it but the one in the middle is what they imagined the

life would be on a planet which is not orbiting a sun so it's dark all the time so they thought that people would be partying all the time you

know and the one to the right is a planet which is around actual Planet which is around what we call a warm you know warm star that mean it's not as

bright as the Sun so it emits most of its radiation in the infrared or in the red color so most likely the grass looks

red so we can say the grass is red on the other side of the fence so that's amaz I mean these people and these were so popular that we ended doing a whole

set for every planet on doing that so you can Google them and you can get copies of this so that's one example of how art is reflecting on on the science

and discoveries we are doing another one we're doing the spacecraft which is at the cape now that will be La launching you know toward Jupiter and Europa we

decided to put a PO a plaque on it and it has a poem which is written by a

leemon she is a us she is the 24th poet you know which was identified as one of the Poets of the United States

and basically the name of the poet is uh let's see I have it here something which is uh In Praise of mystery a poem for

Europa and basically she is a Latina and she is the first Latina to become you know the poet of the United States so we actually put it on a plaque the picture

of the guy that's a scientist who passed away while ago and the other side of the plaque let me blow it up a little bit we

actually put the vibration of the sound of the word water in 70 languages because we are searching for the ocean

on Europa so one of these is water one of these is o in French one of them is aqua in uh and the idea being is are

transmitting our voices across the UN across the plan planet to another to another planet and so you believe me that it's being put on

oops oh here that here the engineers before we shipped it out of JPL they were actually putting on it some of you remember the Golden Disc that we put on

Vier that's the equivalent of the Golden Disc that we have done before now coming closer to the Huntington some of you probably have

seen this so this is also a sculpture done by our by the JPL artist where you go inside of it and every time a

satellite flows flies by you actually hear the sound and that give you a perspective of when thousands of satellites are actually coming over the

Huntington every day oning so it's another way of give you how science and art can intersect and how art can communicate to you all you know what's

being done and this was on our property um correct that and it was here for like seven years on the yeah now this one is

a cool one I I don't take credit for it because this is a very recent one if you go to the brand Library as part of the

of the gy intersection of Art and Science this actually these stocks are connected to little actuators on the

surface we get the signal from Mars about the wind how strong is the wind on Mars and actually make them vibrate based on the strength of the wind so you

are standing there and you are seeing the wind which is happening on Mars how it's affecting how it gets strong it gets we so I would urge you to go and visit that display at the brand after

you visit the display at the Huntington there is another one two exhibition here at the Huntington about global change in

the late uh 1800s and 1900s as reflected by artist and I'm going yeah here you can see it so this is literally what the wind on Mars is actually doing now we

don't have vegetation but it's a way of displaying visually to all of you actually a scientific you know measurement and I'm going to end with

this one it is funny but it is real it has a story behind it uh about uh when I was on my first date was my wife was sitting

in the back uh she used to work in the animation industry she used to produce animation movies well to impress her on the first date I took her to celtech you

know we are nerds you know on the second date I took her to JPL and I took her to a lab where there was a young engineer software

engineer basically developing software to visualize as we fly by a planet how you see it as the planet rotate and the spacecraft rotate so Valerie looked at

me said you know he's going to put animation out of business you know at that time it was all done by hand and here this young engineer developing

software to automate it and put it on computers well he left the JPL after a few years and he didn't invent everything but based on that fundamental

work is now almost all the animation that you see it was based on that fundamental work that was done at JPL so this is an example of how research which

you cannot think about what is it going to be useful for which build a whole new economy you know and that's one example of it and I

think I will come back to our conversation um we'll collect if we if I can have some of the cards I'll ask a couple more questions and take some

question questions um from the audience if Alice if if you have those um so do you think in 25 years we will

find signs of life and what about intelligent life well let me put it this way being a scientist I need to have proof for

things I have no doubt that there is life in the universe uh I mean I can bet you on that but we still haven't discovered it I mean I actually have proof that that we

and the reason I believe there is life is the laws of physics and chemistry and are the same across the whole universe I showed you that picture earlier that literally there are billions and

billions of stars and we're finding that almost every one of them has planet around it we have discovered now like 7,000 you know planets some of them

somewhat similar to Earth from temperature atmosphere and so on so it's hard for me to believe that life only

evolved here even and I'm religious person even when I think God created life on this planet I would say why didn't he create it everywhere you know I mean God is Almighty I mean he could

have created life everywhere so there is no doubt now is it intelligent do we communicate with it you know that that's

still remain to be seen or if it has evolved to do that um sometime I tell people when I used to travel to Washington go to Congress I'm

searching for Life intelligent life I think Lily Tomlin had a Broadway show with a title like that

um okay how did Galactic behemoths like Elon Musk who can control so much fit in the picture of optimism or not for

future space exploration now that's a very good question and I get that question all the time in one form or another and

basically the role of plays like JPL and NASA is to develop new technology new capability the same like celtech and other university and then turn it over

to the private sector who are entrepreneur to actually make an economy out of it so I usually say if Elon is listening he will get mad at me Elon

Musk didn't invent a damn thing but he's a great entrepreneur he took the technology that NASA has developed and made it much more

efficient you know and we are delighted that they are doing that because he created competition now the price of launching drops down significantly so I

have a lot of admiration for him as a technical guy it's different when when he get involved in politics but as a technical

guy I have a lot of admir and a vision Visionary guy but we are delighted that people are picking the kind of technologies that NASA has been doing and actually making it available you

know for the public and making an economy out of it I I mentioned before about NASA's budget so um percentage

wise it's it's declined uh and um again an article recently talked about that declining budget and um you know that

that there's a real problem uh with that and I think it said there we have a 20th century infrastructure for a 21st

century program um I mean is that true is there anything to do about it and how do you see Private Industry yeah oh that's that's very good at fact Karen asked me earlier if you were in charge

of the country what do you do I told her first thing I'll do I'll double NASA budget yeah uh as well as NSF and because an in Oh we must have some JPL

people here yeah no because when you think about it the investment that our country has been doing in advancing science technology

and knowledge is what led to our economic wealth that we have at here none of you will go around without your iPhone none of you would buy an iPhone

which doesn't have a camera you know the focal plane in that camera was developed at JPL for our telescope we didn't do it because it's going to benefit cameras

but we did it to advance the technology uh the internet that was being developed for purely uh scientific and then military reason now you cannot

live without it so I think any investment that we make in gaining knowledge advancing knowledge and advancing technology we'll have tremendous payoff that's one big

strength of our country you know here we invest more in science and technology than any other country and I travel a lot around the world now other countries are trying to catch up with us by

increasing their investment in science and technology and like I told you earlier building these Rovers it's equivalent of a hamburger per US citizen you know that's what it costs it's

peanuts literally so what future JPL exploration are you most excited about that I'm most excited about yeah

well I get a lot of these questions number one I'm excited about anything JPL does because anything we do gain you new knowledge and allow you to discover

anything be it looking at the Earth monitoring the earth's climate and what's happening you know with global warming looking at other planets so I would say the most excit couple of

things I would say is the most exciting one is when we start seeing planets around other stars which look exactly like our planet and which have that environment because that will put a

different perspective that life probably it's more real than we think about it uh the other one is monitoring our planet and our pulse again when you go home

Google eyes on Earth that's a software that JPL developed a visual software that will allow you to see literally what was happening today how much carbon

dioxide is being emitted what's the temperature anything which is affecting our planets our environment you can have it on your iPhone and that will allow you basically to make Intelligent

Decisions you know about it now the most dramatic one is Mars Landing I have to admit that because it's really a dramatic moment when you are actually

Landing a Rover on another planet and you said a Rover was a real leap from the other kinds of vehicles that had

been created right I mean creating a Rover was the next big thing in terms of the Lander and the Orbiter I think you said yeah I mean we had a lot of

advanced technology which had to go with it in actuality you remind me of one thing to give you the spirit of JPL what we do uh as I mentioned we crashed a

Lander in the late '90s so after we wanted to sit down and see okay how do we we get oursel out of that depressive mood and that's when I became director

so we went to NASA with three ideas we well we can build an Orbiter which we are sure we know how to do we can build another Lander we're pretty confident we

learned from the one we crash what we do or we can take a leap forward and actually build there over which is an order of magnitude more comp guess which one we selected we went for the Rover

and the lessons for that that when you have a setback don't shy away from taking a Leap Forward you know that because you will learn a hell lot more than trying to copy something which you

have done before how did your education take place who are your major influen how did your education take place and who are your

major influences ah how did my personal education I guess took play well I'm a graduate of calch so that's one

but before CCH to give credit you know I went to France I was at University of grob in France and before that I was in Lebanon and I was fortunate to have

parents who really emphasize education for us and I had teacher who were absolutely absolutely great so so that's kind of my educational background but

the other thing is to emphasize almost in everything you do like when I was the director at JPL that it's we should push

the limit and if there are setbacks these are opportunity to learn these are not opportunity to lay off somebody or to fire somebody and I used to have a

saying to tell the teams which worked on this Rover if the mission succeed you are going to be on the podium if the mission fail I'm going to be on the podium because you know they have to see

that the people in the leadership actually will support them to push the limit and they are not going to go and hide behind the door you know somewhere and that has served us tremendously well

at a place like JPL do you have any advice for someone whose dream is to work at NASA or JPL

either in the Arts or as an astronaut or engineer well I would say pursue your dreams because anything is possible look we didn't go on my background I grew up

in a little village in Lebanon I had no idea I'm going to become the director of JPL I mean I would have never dreamt even about it but you know I I didn't

come here because of JPL I came here because I wanted to get an education fortunately celtech gave me a fellowship and I found out that the JPL is

connected with celtech so the point is pursue your dream almost anything is possible but the most important thing make sure you dream about things you enjoy you know don't don't push your

your kids you know to do something that you like you want them to push something they are passionate about and my two daughters they ended none of them ended

in space activity yeah one one ended in political science and the other one ended in architecture landscape art but they love what they are doing and I'm

delighted that uh that they are doing that so pursue your passion no matter what it is keep pursuing it you will get some setback I got some setback in my

career but you pursue your passion and I think you can achieve what you want to achieve and I'm delighted that some people interested in becoming astronauts they might be the next people who go to

Mars or become work at JPL uh doing a little advertising for JPL usually in the summer we do have a program for students at JPL you know and there is

like six or 700 students the same way at ctech you know it's called the surf program so I encourage people to to look at that go on the website look at it and spend a summer working with some of the

leading researchers and leading Engineers okay little shift of Gears what film or TV show most accurately represents

space I'm going to tell you something that that is going to surprise you I'm not a science fiction fan I mean that surprised a lot of people you know about this thing but I

would say my two favorite programs clearly Star Trek is a lot of fun you know to watch that so I love not not because of you

know that we are going to do what they but the imagination that the movie producers and the artists and the it's an amazing how they imagined and then they were able to actually show it and

the movie is the Martian and the reason I like the Martian for two reasons number one it's almost real you know even that a little science fiction

dramatized you know by Hollywood but almost everything you see on it could be done in the next decade or two decade plus the other one you know Jessica

Chastain came and visited JPL and I'm a big fan of her so we spent some time oh and there is a third thing is one of the thing which saved them was the little

Lander that we had from JPL you know if you recall remember that for the communication and before the movie was released publicly they offered to show

it to a group of Jers who we rented a movie theater and we showed them and every time the word JPL came up guess what everybody was jumping and cheer so

so these are my two favorites that's good I was reading about a movie I don't know if anybody saw Jodie Foster in

contact in the '90s right but uh and she was a radio engineer I think and she got

to be able to um actually encounter life you know to to experience space-time

Mysteries and um but the line that I really liked in the movie was they should have sent a

poet um and and recently I was reading um an article about entitled NASA needs

philosophers um so so just the the kind of again back to the The Poetry of um of space and and a ability to capture

mystery and words you said you don't like science fiction that much that's that's intersection of science and art like what you said one thing I you know

maybe some of you know it when we had I think curiosity we had to wake it every morning you know to start operating so we used a piece of music you know on our

communication link to wake it up so it's like what you wake up with music on your phone so so these things really work together I think they okay there you're

you're I think I are we spending all night here no we've got we've got a few more minutes um how do you manage public faith in

science especially given the huge instances of fraud identify in peer review journals a large increase

over the decades both as a percentage um and of course in absolute terms yeah I think the question is how

do you manage public faith in science uh also that's that's a very good question particularly now with all this chat GPT Ai and so on

uh I mean it's very important to have checks and balances and communicate to the public how actually we do I mean as scientists we don't publish unless it's

peer-reviewed if I write something and I came with an invention I want you to review it make sure that you can repeat that invention uh or whatever you know

was done and that's our way as scientists to assure the public that what we are doing is correct you know on it and it's really and what worries me a

little bit or maybe a lot about the AI and the chat gbt is it relies heavily on everything which is on the internet and I don't need to tell you there is a lot

of BS on the internet you know to do that so people are starting to think now of how do we make sure that when we use

chat GPT it only access information which have been verified not any information that somebody put on it so it is a challenge I mean whoever wrote this thing it is a good point you know

that we really need to communicate to the public of the processes that to follow to make sure the information and the discoveries are

correct sorry about okay um this is not a question but I'm going to read the poem that traveled 1.5 billion is is

going to travel 1.5 billion miles right in Praise of mystery hopefully it will be launched on Sunday right we're still planning for it to be

launched on Sunday um and then and and then we'll uh call it an evening and thank you so much for this but let me end with the words of the poet laurate

In Praise of mystery a poem for Europa arching under the night sky Inky with black black expansiveness we point

to the planets we know we pin quick wishes on stars from Earth we read the sky as if it is an uniring book of the

universe expert and evident still there are Mysteries below our Sky the whale song the song bird singing It's call in the bow of a wind

shaken tree we are creatures of constant awe curious at Beauty at Leaf and Blossom at

grief and pleasure sun and Shadow and it is not darkness that unites us not the cold distance of space

but the offering of water each drop of rain each rivet each pulse each

vein oh second moon we too are made of water of vast and beckoning Seas we too are made of wonders of great

and ordinary loves of small invisible worlds of a need to call out through the dark thank you Charles for all of this it's

been thank you Beau yeah and thank you all for coming it's been a pleasure to have you here and great questions that you asked thank you

thanks have a good evening thank you