Johnny B. Goode

Once again, NASA has boldly gone where no one has before. The Parker Solar Probe, launched on 12 August 2018, flew through our Sun’s corona and upper atmosphere for the first time on 28 April 2021. So why is it notable today? Because it was only this week that the data from the event finally traveled back to Earth and was confirmed by scientific analysis. I love the interpretation given the event by Nicola Fox, Heliophysics Division Director of the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters. For the first time, she said, “humanity has touched the sun”.

The mission of the solar probe is to gather data that will help our understanding of solar winds, magnetic fields, and other astronomical events that could be a threat to satellite communications—something that we have grown increasingly dependent on. But studying our own star also allows us to increase our knowledge about all stars…and our universe. The NASA Parker solar probe will make 21 close approaches to the Sun throughout a seven-year mission, with the next major flyby in January 2022. Then, NASA says, in 2024 the probe will reach its closest proximity to the Sun…and afterwards, will die in a fiery cataclysm in 2025.

The technology of this accomplishment blows me away. The Sun’s corona is one million degrees Kelvin at its hottest point! The solar probe was engineered with special heat shields to maintain the instruments on board the spacecraft at a safe 81 degrees Fahrenheit. 

I’m sure I’m not the only Southerner who wishes that NASA could engineer a summer hat for me when I’m out and about on one of my home state’s sultry summer dog days {smile}.

Having grown up in Rocket City, USA, I’ve always been a bit of a space news junkie. So, the news this week confirming the success of the probe put me in mind of another NASA event that I have followed most of my adult life. The launch of the twin Voyagers spacecraft in 1977, with the primary mission to explore Jupiter and Saturn, electrified me at the time. Voyager 1’s entry in 25 August 2012 and then Voyager 2’s entry on 5 November 2018—into interstellar space was a cause for celebration. For me, it spoke a narrative not only of science and vision, but of poetry. In order for Voyager 1 and 2 to move into interstellar space, the spacecraft had to pass through the heliosphere—the bubble around the sun created by the outward flow of the solar winds from the sun and the opposing inward flow of the interstellar wind. It is hard for me to even grasp those words without also trying to visualize what that must look like. That is the vision part. The poetry part comes with the moment of transition into interstellar space. The heliopause marks the end of the heliosphere and the beginning of interstellar space. Just the word ‘heliopause’ sounds like poetry to me–as does ‘solar winds’ and ‘interstellar wind’ 🙂

And if one has any doubt that science, poetry, and music do not have deep, deep intertwined roots, then the next astounding aspect of the Voyager mission will clarify just that fact. A ‘golden record’ was included on each of the Voyager spacecraft. The record was a 12 inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth. The purpose of the golden record was to carry a greeting to any form of life, should that be encountered. How is that not magic and science and vision all rolled together?  The fact that Dr. Carl Sagan of Cornell University was chair of the committee that determined the contents of the record—yes, the same Dr. Carl Sagan of the “pale blue dot”—was also significant for me because he was my hero. Over thirty years ago, as Voyager 1 was hurtling toward interstellar space, and thirty four minutes before its cameras turned off forever, the spacecraft swiveled around and gazed backward. A last visual goodbye to Earth before aiming for the heliopause. Candy Hansen, who was part of the Voyager imaging team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, was the first to look at the last images from Voyager’s backward facing cameras.  She thought at first that there had been a problem because although she could identify Neptune, Uranus, Saturn, Jupiter…she could not find Earth. And then, she noticed a bright spot in a ray of scattered light that she knew was not a dust or blemish. A bright dot that Carl Sagan later referred to as,

 “That’s here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives … on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”

Yeah, that’s why he was my hero.  And the poetic idea that as all of us live out our lives and then die— our words, our music, reflections of our humanity—has propelled past the heliopause and into interstellar space to live forever and ever. How is that not science and poetry? So, where does the ‘music’ part come into that conceptual space I referred to earlier as an intertwining of music, science, and poetry? Well, one of the songs on the golden record was Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode. Here’s a classic video of Chuck Berry playing the titular song with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.

https://youtu.be/6swgiM9vSEE

A year after Voyager 1 and 2 had launched in 1977, Saturday Night Live did a newscaster skit with Steve Martin in which he claimed that the golden record, our first attempt at interstellar communication, had, in fact, been received by aliens. And they sent a message back. The alien response was finally translated by scientists to English and what it said was, ‘SEND MORE CHUCK BERRY!’

So—science, music, and poetry—forever enshrined in a golden record that has passed the heliopause and is hurtling through interstellar space. 

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To All, Good Light, and a Merry Christmas!