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]