The Jet Propulsion Laboratory with Mr. Joseph Lazio Chief Scientific Deep Space Network-JPL. 185 LFDLC (English)

With the special collaboration of students the British College of Gavà and Cristina García Miró MDSCC. Thank for your participation
Joseph Lazio is a Principal Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Project Scientist for the Square Kilometre Array. He received his Ph.D. at Cornell University (Ithaca, NY), was awarded a National Research Council Research Associateship, and was a staff member at the Naval Research Laboratory before joining JPL. He has authored or co-authored nearly 100 papers on topics including radio searches for extrasolar planets, physics of the interstellar medium, gravitational physics studies via radio pulsar measurements, and tracking the evolution of the intergalactic medium during the Epoch of Reionization. In addition to helping to develop the science case for the SKA, he also serves as the Deputy Director for the Lunar University Network for Astrophysics Research (LUNAR). He routinely uses a number of leading radio facilities, including the Very Long Baseline Array, the Expanded Very Large Array, and the Green Bank Telescope.

The Deep Space Network as a Scientific instrument
interview Mr. Joseph Lazio

What is the NASA Deep Space Network?
What is the role of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the DSN?
What is your position in JPL? And what are your duties?
The DSN is a telecommunications network. Can you do science with the DSN?
What type of science can you do with the DSN antennas?
What information is sent and received with the antennas of the DSN from the space missions?
How many missions are suppported with the DSN?
What is DSN now? What information can be checked in realtime from the DSN complexes? Can we connect to DSN now from the school?
What is the Solar System radar?
How do you know how big in the Solar System?
Since when astronomers know how big is the Solar System?
What can you observe with the Solar System radar? Comets? Asteroids?
With what detail in the images?
Do you collaborate with other antennas for the radar observations?
How this radar is helping us to measure distances in the solar system?
What is radio science?
Can we say that the system spacecraft/antenna becomes a scientific instrument in radio science experiments?
What can we learn about the atmospheres of the planets with radio science experiments?
And about the planets interior structure?
Can you apply this technique also for moons like Phobos in Mars? What have we learned about Phobos?
And about our Moon?
And about any other moon in the Solar System?
Can you find water with radio science experiments? Why it is important to find water in the solar system? Where else in the Solar System there is water?
Does Pluto has an atmosphere?
How was rhis fact discovered with radio science experiments using New Horizons satellite?
What JUNO is going to study about Jupiter's interior using radio science experiments?
What radio astronomy projects do you do with the DSN antennas?
How do you navigate spacecrafts through the Solar System?
How do you use quasars for that?
What is a quasar?
Is there water in the center of active galaxies? How do you detect it?
What is a planetary nebula? Will our sun evolve into a planetary nebula?
What other type of objects do you observe? Do you observe how the stars are being formed? Is the stellar chemistry very complexe?
And the future for the DSN?
Do we need to improve the data rates? Why?
What is laser communication?
What are cubesats?
Do you plan to use them for Solar System exploration?
Can we do radio astronomy from the space?
Do the galaxies evolve and interact with each other?
What is a pulsar and what information could give us about the Universe?
Can you tell us about the Hawing idea to send a spacecraft to alpha centauri in 20years?

T. Joseph W. Lazio

Chief Scientist, Interplanetary Network Directorate

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology