Celebrating Carl Sagan and a New Solar Sail With Ann Druyan

[bananas]

Planetary Radio:

Celebrating Carl Sagan and a New Solar Sail With Ann Druyan

November 9 would have been Carl Sagan's 75th birthday. The Planetary Society celebrates with the announcement of the LightSail solar sailing program. Longtime Sagan collaborator Ann Druyan talks about her late husband's legacy and ongoing influence. Emily Lakdawalla's Q&A explains why we study meteorites on Mars. Bruce Betts and Mat Kaplan are also celebrating on this week's What's Up, and have another Cosmos 1 Team jacket to give away in the space trivia contest. Bill Nye is on assignment in Washington.

Guests
* Ann Druyan

Related Information
* "A Glorious Dawn" Music Video:
* At Home in the Cosmos With Annie Druyan Podcast (Not yet available on PodJockey)
* LightSail Project

NY Times article posted in LBN: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4140176

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/science/space/10solar.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all">Setting Sail Into Space, Propelled by Sunshine

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Even as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration continues to flounder in a search for its future, Dr. Friedman announced Monday that the Planetary Society, with help from an anonymous donor, would be taking baby steps toward a future worthy of science fiction. Over the next three years, the society will build and fly a series of solar-sail spacecraft dubbed LightSails, first in orbit around the Earth and eventually into deeper space.

The voyages are an outgrowth of a long collaboration between the society and Cosmos Studios of Ithaca, N.Y., headed by Ann Druyan, a film producer and widow of the late astronomer and author Carl Sagan.

Sagan was a founder of the Planetary Society, in 1980, with Dr. Friedman and Bruce Murray, then director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The announcement was made at the Hart Senate Office Building in Washington at a celebration of what would have been Sagan’s 75th birthday. He died in 1996.

Ms. Druyan, who has been chief fund-raiser for the society’s sailing projects, called the space sail “a Taj Mahal” for Sagan, who loved the notion and had embraced it as a symbol for the wise use of technology.

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