Tour the solar system from home Jon Nguyen

[Music]

[Applause]

as a kid I was fascinated with all

things air and space I would watch Nova

on PBS our school would show Bill Nye

the Science Guy when I was when I was in

elementary school my next-door neighbor

he gave me a book for my birthday it was

an astronomy book and I pored over that

thing for hours on end and it was a

combination of all these things that

inspired me to pursue space exploration

as my own personal dream and part of

that dream was I always wanted to just

fly around the solar system and visit

different planets and visit moons and

spacecraft well a number of years later

I graduated from UCLA and I found myself

at NASA working for the Jet Propulsion

Laboratory and there our team was

challenged to create a 3d visualization

of the solar system and today I want to

show you what we’ve done so far

now the care is everything I’m about to

do here you can do at home because we

built this for the public for you guys

to use so what you’re looking at right

now is the earth you can see United

States and California and San Diego and

you can use the mouse or the keyboard to

spend things around now this isn’t new

anyone who’s used Google Earth has seen

this before but one thing we like to say

in our group is we do the opposite of

Google Earth Google Earth goes from this

view down to your backyard we go from

this view out to the Stars so the earth

is cool but what we really want to show

the spacecraft so I’m gonna bring the

interface back up and now you’re looking

at a number of satellites orbiting the

Earth these are a number of our science

base earth orbiters we haven’t included

military satellites and weather

satellites and communication satellites

or reconnaissance satellites if we did

it would be a complete mess because

there’s a lot of stuff out there and the

cool thing is we actually created 3d

models for a number of the spacecraft so

if you want to visit any of these all

you need to do is double click on them

so I’m gonna find

the International Space Station

double-click and it’ll take us all the

way down to the ISS and now you’re

riding along with the ISS where it is

right now and the other cool thing is

not only can we move the camera around

we can also control time so I can slide

this jog dial here to shuttle time

forward and now we could see what a

sunset on the ISS would look like and

they get one every 90 minutes alright so

what about the rest of it well I can

click on this home button over here and

that’ll take us up to the inner solar

system and now we’re looking at the rest

of the solar system you can see there’s

Saturn this Jupiter and while we’re here

I want to point out something it’s

actually pretty busy here we have the

Mars Science Laboratory on its way to

Mars just launched last weekend here we

have Juno on its cruise to Jupiter there

we have Don orbiting Vesta and we have

over here New Horizons on a straight

shot to Pluto and I mentioned this

because this is a strange public

perception that NASA is dead that the

Space Shuttle stopped flying and all of

a sudden there’s no more spacecraft out

there well a lot of what NASA does is

robotic exploration and we have a lot of

spacecraft out there granted we’re not

sending humans up at the moment well at

least with our own with our own launch

vehicles but NASA is far from dead and

one of the reasons why we write a

program like this is so that people

realize that there’s so many other

things that we’re doing anyway while

we’re here again if you want to visit

anything all you need to do is double

click so I’m just going to double click

on Vesta and here we have Don orbiting

Vesta and this is happening right now

I’m going to double click on Uranus and

we can see Uranus rotating on its side

along with its moons you can see how

it’s tilted at 89 degrees and just being

able to visit different places and go

through different times we have data

from 1950 to 2050 grant thing we don’t

have everything

in between some of the data is hard to

get just being able to visit places in

different times you can explore

everything you can explore this for

hours literally hours on end but I want

to show you one thing in particular so

I’m going to open up the destination tab

spacecraft outer planet missions Voyager

1 and I’m gonna bring up the Titan

Flyway so now we’ve gone back in time

we’re now riding along with Voyager 1

the date here is November 11th 1980

there’s a funny thing going on here it

doesn’t look like anything’s going on it

looks like I’ve paused the program it’s

actually running at real rate right now

1 second per second and in fact Voyager

one here is flying by Titan at I think

it’s 38,000 miles per hour it only looks

like nothing’s moving because well

Saturn here is 700,000 miles away and

Titan here is four to five thousand

miles away it’s just the vastness of

space makes it look like nothing’s

happening but to make it more

interesting I’m gonna speed up time and

we can watch as Voyager one flies by

Titan which is a hazy moon of Saturn it

actually has a very thick atmosphere and

I’m gonna recenter the camera on Saturn

here I’m gonna pull out and I want to

show you

Voyager 1 as it flies by Saturn but

there’s a point to be made here with the

3d visualization like this we can not

only just say Voyager 1 flew by Saturn

there’s a whole story to tell here it

even better because it’s an interactive

application you can tell the story for

yourself if you want to pause it you can

pause it if you want to keep going if

you want to change the camera angle you

can do that and because of that I can

show you that Voyager 1 doesn’t just fly

by Saturn it actually flies underneath

Saturn now what happens is as it flies

underneath Saturn said it grabs it

gravitationally and flings it up and out

of the solar system so if I just keep

letting this go you can see Voyager 1

fly up like that

and in fact I’m going to go back to the

solar system I’m going to go back to

today now and I want to show you where

Voyager one is right there above way

above the solar system way beyond our

solar system and here’s a thing now you

know how it got there now you know why

and to me that’s the point of this

program you can manipulate it yourself

you can fly around yourself and you can

learn for yourself let you know the

theme today is the world in your grasp

well we’re trying to give you the solar

system in your grasp and we hope once

it’s there you’ll be able to learn for

yourself what we’ve done out there and

what we’re about to do and my personal

dream is for kids to take this and

explore and see the wonders out there

and be inspired as I was as a kid to

pursue STEM education and to pursue a

dream in space exploration thank you

[Applause]