Eyes on Pluto
Dear Friends,
Welcome to July’s Substack.
This month’s blog Eyes on Pluto casts a look skyward with a glance back and then forward.
The Writer at Risk section focuses on the case of Arnon Nampa from Thailand, a lawyer and poet, sentenced to over a decade in prison under Thailand’s strict lèse-majesté laws which prohibit criticism of the monarchy in spite of the country’s stated commitment to free expression.
In Books to Check Out is a pairing of two substantive, fast-paced thrillers. Tess Gerritsen’s The Spy Coast is set in rural Maine where retired CIA operatives have settled only to have the past of one catch up with them. The Spy Coast is already optioned for a tv series. David Ignatius’ Phantom Orbit, published in May, waves a red flag for the dangers ahead in space with spacial tracking where hundreds of satellites now cruise, and future and current wars may be lost or won.
In the Scene section you’ll find new photos along with text from The Far Side of the Desert.
Thanks again to friends and new readers who’ve come to bookstores, book clubs and online to share my novels The Far Side of the Desert and Burning Distance this past month. I look forward to staying in touch and meeting more readers at future events. If engaged by the novels, thank you for telling friends and leaving a review with online booksellers.
I hope you enjoy these and other features and share this free monthly Substack On the Yellow Brick Road with friends!
Eyes On Pluto
With fraught political climates on the ground in many countries—at least 64 countries face elections this year with democracies in the balance—and with discourse often less than inspiring, I find myself looking up and into the clouds and the sky above for an uncluttered view. That instinct was further encouraged by a book I recently read and note in the Books to Check Out section of this Substack—David Ignatius’ Phantom Orbit. Even before reading this novel, I was recalling a major event in July nine years ago when the New Horizons spacecraft built by Johns Hopkins University’s Advanced Physics Lab gathered data and reported back from Pluto.
As a Hopkins trustee, I was privileged to watch the encounter along with others at the Advanced Physics Lab when the spacecraft reported from its Pluto orbit. “We’re in lock with telemetry with the spacecraft.” A cheer erupted! I re-publish here the story of the event which I still find stirring. The precision of calculations is astonishing, the vision expansive, and the cooperative effort and possibilities for the future inspiring.
Space is considerably more crowded nine years later and much has transpired. Space remains an open territory though one that we must hope doesn’t become clogged with earthbound conflicts and competitions.
EYES ON PLUTO…“WE DID IT!”
By Joanne Leedom-Ackerman | July 15, 2015
Headlines from earth yesterday heralded the Iranian Nuclear Deal, but some of us were looking skyward. On a small green campus tucked into suburban Maryland at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab scientists, engineers, media, friends, family, faculty and board of Johns Hopkins University awaited the report back from Pluto. The New Horizons spacecraft, built by Hopkins APL engineers and scientists, had arrived at the outer planet three billion miles away after a nine and a half year journey. That evening the spacecraft was reporting in after 22 hours of silence while it gathered extensive data as it passed within 7750 miles of Pluto.
The spacecraft, which had been built in a record four years at APL, had traveled at a rate of a million miles/day (between 31,000-46,000mph depending on its orbit). The evening before it had started downloading data and taking pictures in a rapid collection of scientific information. It couldn’t do that job and call home at the same time so its progenitors waited anxiously at Mission Control, aware that any number of unpredictable events like a pebble size bit of detritus colliding could disrupt and destroy the mission.
“Stand by for telemetry….” Mission Operations Manager (MOM) Alice Bowman alerted. At 8:52:37pm—right on time—New Horizons called home. “We’re in lock with telemetry with the spacecraft,” she affirmed as one by one the systems managers reported: “MOM, propulsion is nominal…MOM, thermal is nominal…MOM, power is nominal…” Nominal meant normal. MOM meant Alice. The conclusion: “We have a healthy spacecraft and we’re outbound for Pluto!” The room at Mission Control and in the auditorium nearby burst into cheers and tears and gave a standing ovation. It was a remarkable moment and extraordinary achievement.
The mission had proceeded like clockwork. It had been a team effort over a decade and a half, occupying 2500 people. The very best scientists and engineers built the space craft, designed its scientific mission (including the first student-designed project on a NASA mission), programmed its course. The trajectory included an important scientific data-gathering pass of Jupiter, where the spacecraft received a needed gravity assist which sent it hurling on its way into deep space.
New Horizons arrived at the closest approach to the planet just 72 seconds early. That precision over nine years and three billion miles was almost impossible to comprehend except to the scientists and engineers who understood that precision was essential to accomplish the task. Even a small margin of error projected over that amount of time and space could be disastrous.
The mission exemplified a remarkable achievement of teamwork and partnerships among NASA, universities, and the U.S. Department of Energy which supplied the plutonium power source. The nuclear power it provided will allow the spacecraft to operate until 2030. The total power draw for the Pluto encounter was only 202 watts (about three and a half light bulbs). Each transmission draws only 28 watts (enough to power two small night lights.) Reception of these transmissions relies on super giant receivers—the Deep Space Network. There are only three in the world large enough—one in Madrid, Spain, one in Pasadena, CA in the US and one outside Canberra, Australia. The placement of them means that data can be received at any time as the earth spins on its axis. Last night’s transmissions were broadcast from Pluto four and a half hours before they were received, traveling at the speed of light and sent via the giant antenna dish in Madrid.
Alan Stern, the head of the New Horizons Mission and NASA’s chief investigator, told the gathering: “We did it! One small step for New Horizons, one giant leap for mankind.”
The audience included students who had been born almost ten years before on the day of the New Horizons launch. An elementary school boy asked, “Does this make Pluto a planet?” Fran Bagenal, NASA team leader for plasma investigations on the Mission, answered, “Yes! Of course Pluto is a planet!”
The Pluto mission began as a barroom bet by Alan Stern to prove Pluto was not just a dwarf planet but a full planet. The exploration was affirmed as a top priority by the National Academy of Science. In the audience last night were the grown children of Claude Tombaugh, the astronomer who originally discovered Pluto. Eighty-five years earlier their father told his senior astronomer, “I think I have found your planet X.”
Fifty years before to the day—July 14—humans first explored Mars with NASA’s Mariner 4. John Casani, special assistant to the director at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and one of the early engineers in the space program noted, “People developing spacecraft today know what they are doing. We didn’t know what we were doing. Back then the shoulders we were standing on were too narrow and our shoes were too big. We had only the technology for guided missiles.”
The scientists and engineers had to figure out, among other concepts, 3-axis stabilization. “Innovation was the key to making things work,” Dr. Casani said. “There was no book on 3-axis stabilization. We were all only a couple of years out of graduate school. We weren’t experienced enough to know that what they were asking us to do couldn’t be done.”
“You couldn’t go to the library and ask for a book,” added Norm Haynes, who was the trajectory engineer for the Mariner 4 Mission and also spent his career at NASA’s JPL. “There were no textbooks on how to build a spacecraft.”
There were no computers on board the first spacecrafts either. In 1962 the computer had only a 65,000-word vocabulary as opposed to the multiple gigabytes of memory today. The first computer was aboard Mariner 4 which delivered 22 pictures of Mars, each taking ten hours to send back. It took 60 hours to go to the Moon, 6,000 hours to go to Mars and now the New Horizons spacecraft can endure a nine and a half year journey to Pluto and still arrive in tact. The per mile cost of New Horizon was 25 cents/mile; the per mile cost of Columbus was $3000/mile and the per mile cost of Magellan was $5000/mile. On Mariner 4 in 1965 the spacecraft transmitted information at 8 1/3 bits / second; New Horizon transmits at 1000 bits/second and it is 60 times further away.
The scientists and engineers said the key to success was the willingness to imagine, to innovate and to be willing to fail. Considerable failures preceded this achievement.
Why is the exploration of Pluto important? It opens up our view of what is possible, of the universe and perhaps even of ourselves, suggesting larger horizons physical and metaphysical. It demonstrates the possibilities of human potential—of imagination and ingenuity empowered by cooperation, teamwork and a large goal. From a scientific point of view, from the point of view of NASA which has to secure the funding, it provides knowledge about the universe where we live and the universe beyond.
The data that will be gathered on the New Horizons’ close approach to Pluto is about 100 times more than can transmit before the spacecraft flies away. It will take 16 months to send all the scientific information home.
“We explore because we are human, but we want to know,” said noted physicist Stephen Hawking in a call-in message to the gathering.
If the next stage is funded, the New Horizons spacecraft will go off to explore the outer reaches of the Kuiper Belt, letting us know what lies beyond Pluto in the further reaches of space.
The spacecraft was built to last. Its power will endure until 2030, then it will not be sufficient to keep the instruments warm enough to operate, and the craft will drift into deep space. By 2030, the equipment on the spacecraft will be 40 years old and the innovations that will have developed by then we can now barely imagine.
The Far Side of the Desert was included in Bookreporter’s Summer Readings recommendations. Check out all the books on the list. Happy reading!
Selected recordings of events and interviews include:
Malaprop’s Bookstore and Café in Asheville, NC
Kinokuniya Bookstore in New York City with Salil Tripathi
Baum on Books on WSHU Public Radio
Interview with Anna Roins of Authorlink
Interview with Deborah Kalb
For more podcasts, videos and interviews, click here
“The Far Side of the Desert is a riveting thriller with richly nuanced characters and fast-paced action. The plot imaginatively taps into recent history to illustrate the human dimensions of terrorism—both the complex psyche of the perpetrators and the gnawing questions among those sucked into their vortex. I binged until the end.”
—Robin Wright, author of Rock the Casbah: Rage and Rebellion across the Islamic World
Burning Distance (Oceanview Publishing, 2023 and recent paperback in 2024) was recently honored by the 2024 American Book Fest International Book Awards as a Finalist in the Best Mystery/Suspense and Thriller/Adventure categories.
“Burning Distance is a mystery, a complicated, story-driven drama of lives lived amidst the high risk of life and death in international arms trading and the book is grounded by the unlikely love story between Lizzy and Adil Hasan. Her obsession is to uncover the secrets which led to her father's death and in her quest she comes to find that everyone in this story is linked by danger, everyone is at risk. This is a real page turner which also informs, excites and moves us.”
—Susan Richards Shreve, More News Tomorrow
Arnon Nampa (Thailand)
(Sources include PEN International, PEN America, Reuters, The Center for Southeast Asian Studies)
The offense of lèse-majesté dates back to the late period of the Roman Empire when the emperors opposed the ideals of a Roman Republic and equated themselves with the state and deified themselves so that their position was assured immunity from all criticism and assured penalties for those who did criticize.
Lèse-majesté laws, or some variation, still exist in numbers of states in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and South America. One of the strictest lèse-majesté laws operates in Thailand where the monarchy is protected from criticism, and violation of the law carries a maximum jail sentence of up to 15 years for each perceived royal insult.
Arnon Nampa, a human rights lawyer and poet who has spoken out at peaceful rallies and posted suggestions for reform of the Thai monarchy on Facebook, is now imprisoned under Thailand’s lèse-majesté law (Art. 112). Nampa faces more than a decade in prison with 11 additional charges and upcoming trials. He was originally arrested in 2020 and sentenced to four years for comments at a rally calling for a public debate on the role of the monarchy. He was given an additional four years for three facebook posts in which he suggested the Thai people should be able to criticize and “speak the truth” about the monarchy.
A leader of Thailand’s youth-led democracy movement, Nampa has also used his poetry to highlight struggles of those marginalized in Thailand. A collection of his poetry, entitled People are Blind and Mute No Longer, was released to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the 2006 military coup. In 2021, PEN International published English translations of two booklets which contain speeches made by Nampa during the 2020 protests.
As a lawyer, Nampa has taken on multiple cases that involved deprivation of human rights by the government, and he has called for an end to the lèse-majesté law. His own case is now a test for Thailand’s legal system and its commitment to the right to freedom of expression explicitly extended to lawyers under Article 23 of the UN Basic Principles on the Role of Lawyers. Meanwhile authorities claim his behavior would “incite, intend to cause unrest, distort information and insult on the monarchy.”
Below is a letter from Arnon Nampa to his children, courtesy of Justice in Translation, published under Creative Comments:
Letter No. 51
12 January 2024
They played a sentimental Korean song this morning in Zone 2. The speaker was far off and the music sounded like lightly falling snow. Listening to such a melody created a different kind of atmosphere. It was not clear like when we listen from headphones or a high-quality speaker. But in the prison, which is filled with hundreds, thousands of people who long for home, listening to music is a peculiar thing. The feeling is melancholic, lonely, sad, as though we are hoping for something or other.
To Pran and Issaranon, my darling children:
Daddy is on his 2nd night of being quarantined in Zone 2 of the Bangkok Remand Prison. If we count the quarantine at the Chiang Mai Prison, this is my 8th night. But this is different than the quarantine in Chiang Mai Prison. Daddy was also separated there, but I had privacy, peace and quiet, and books to read. But Bangkok Remand is pretty lively with new entrants. The peace and quiet is gone and replaced with people. Now Daddy is just waiting for when I will be able to return back to Zone 4, my original zone. Daddy will have time to prepare to go to court and organize my life as it should be.
Next week is another in which there will be judgments in many cases, including one of Daddy’s political cases. But that is not as important as Daddy being able to go to the court to see my children and your Mommy. Now, every time Daddy goes to court, all I anticipate is that I will see those I love, those I long for, the whole family, and all of the aunties and uncles who support Daddy and all of my fellow political prisoners.
The cases are merely a phenomenon and one slice of Thai political history. Please give my thoughts to the rights organizations that are working hard for those of us in prison. Give your Mommy a kiss for Daddy, too.
I love and miss my two children a great deal –
Arnon Nampa
Zone 2
Bangkok Remand Prison
To Take Action for Arnon Nampa:
Please send appeals to the authorities of Thailand, urging them to:
Release Arnon Nampa immediately and unconditionally;
Urge the repeal of the lèse-majesté law (Article 112.)
Send appeals to:
Prime Minister
Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin
Office of the Prime Minister
Government House, Pitsanulok Road
Bangkok Thailand 10300
Email: prforeign@prd.go.th
Send copies to the Embassy of Thailand in your own country. Embassy addresses may be found here: https://www.thaiembassy.com/thaiembassies
An attack on a writer, the shutting down of a publishing house, the torching of a newspaper reduce the space in the world where ideas can flow. Freedom of expression is vital to writers and to readers but is challenged daily around the world. Listed here are organizations whose work on human rights and in particular issues of freedom of expression I’ve been engaged with directly and indirectly over the years. Some of the organizations have broader agendas, but all have contributed to keeping space open for the individual voice.
PEN International (with its 147 centers in over 100 countries)
PEN American Center
English PEN
PEN/Faulkner Foundation
Human Rights Watch
Amnesty International
Amnesty International USA
International Freedom of Expression Exchange (IFEX)
Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ)
Article 19
Index on Censorship
Poets and Writers
Authors Guild
International Center for Journalists
Expanding my reading of international political thrillers, I recommend two recent novels I’ve read in the past month, both by seasoned best-selling novelists.
Retired to the cozy town of Purity (fictional name) Maine, Maggie Bird and four other ex-CIA operatives have settled into a rural life of raising chickens, supporting local library programs and a monthly Martini Club gathering at one of their homes where they talk about books and share a meal. That is until a dead body shows up in Maggie’s driveway. The entourage goes into professional mode much to the frustration of the local and savvy young chief of police Jo Thibodeau, who is also investigating the murder and a subsequent attempted murder. Jo Thibodeau is regularly bested by these new gray-haired strangers to her community.
The premise of The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen, the characters, and the action which plays off an op 16 years ago have the best elements of an international thriller. The story takes Maggie and her companions halfway around the world in pursuit of an elusive villain and a compromised past. The Spy Coast is a compelling read, already optioned for a television series. I confess I’d never read Tess Gerritsen, author of dozens of books and medical thrillers, who herself lives in Camden, Maine, until I met her and heard her speak at this year’s ThrillerFest in New York. I look forward to the next stories of the charming, sometimes fractious members of the Martini Club.
From The Spy Coast:
Back in my truck, I drive home across back roads that are bumpy with frost heaves, through a black and white landscape of bare trees and snow-covered fields. This is not where I saw myself landing at the end of my life. I grew up in a place of dust and heat and blindingly bright summers, and my first winter in Maine was a challenge. I learned how to split firewood and drive on ice and thaw frozen pipes, and I learned that one is never too old to adapt. When I was young and imagined the setting for a perfect retirement, I dreamed it would be a hilltop villa in Koh Samui, or a tree house on the Osa Peninsula, where I would be serenaded by birds and howler monkeys. These were places I knew and loved places that, in the end, I could not flee to.
Because that’s where they would expect me to be. Being predictable is always the first mistake.
An alarm beeps on my phone.
I glance down at the screen, and what I see makes me hit the brakes. I pull off to the side of the road and stare at the image. It’s the video feed from my security system. Someone has just entered my house.
David Ignatius’ recent novel Phantom Orbit is fiction, but the detailed research and the history of scientific development in spacial tracking from one of America’s most respected journalists could easily convince the reader that he/she is privy to a behind-the-scenes expose of these developments and the dangers that have arisen in space. The threat that a malevolent actor—a state like Russia or China or a rogue entity—could literally “make time stop and turn north into south” puts the West and the global order at risk.
The facts and the story build, starting with the fall of the Soviet Union in the late 1980’s and the brief hope of rapprochement with Russia and China in the 1990’s. Phantom Orbit introduces the brilliant and honest Russian science student Ivan Volkov doing graduate work in astronomy at China’s prestigious Tsinghua University where he meets the forthright American engineering graduate student Edith Ryan, who is being recruited by the CIA. Though their encounter is brief, it is fortuitous. The novel follows the professional and personal stories of each over a 27-year period until their paths cross again at the height of Russia’s war in the Ukraine where “Space was the hidden battlefront.”
The climax has an unexpected twist that brings the story and impending disaster into a possibly more benign orbit.
From Phantom Orbit:
Ivan Volkov studied the message on his computer screen in the powdery last light of the Moscow afternoon. It was an invitation to commit suicide, wrapped in vanilla icing. “People from nearly every country share information with the Central Intelligence Agency, and new individuals contact us daily. If you have information that might help our foreign intelligence collection mission, there are many ways to reach us.”
Volkov had read those words a half dozen times over the past week, on as many different computers. His head was on fire. He was tall, handsome once, an angular, weathered face from the Steppes. He loved his country, but even more he despised what it had become. Now, in the library of the Lebedev Physical Institute, on a virtual private network that Vladimir Vladimirovich himself could not break, he prepared to compose his text. He read the instructions once more.
“If you feel it is safe, think about including these details in your message: Your full name. Biographic details. How to contact you.”
These Americans were spoiled, really. They did not know pain. They were Adam, fallen. But they still ruled the ordered world, even more, now. After Russia invaded Ukraine, it was humiliated, hobbled, scorned by the decent world. But it still had its secrets. And it sought to eliminate anyone who might imagine sharing them. The Chekists had created an organization to kill betrayers that endured, now under a different name. It was the thing that Russia was still truly good at.
Volkov typed: “I am Anonymous. I live on a street with no entrance or exit. Here is my information: You are blind to the danger from above. Satellites are your enemies, especially your own. You have 16 ground monitors and 11 antennas to run your global navigation system. Do you trust it? That is only the beginning. Hidden codes can seem to make time stop and turn north into south. They will freeze your world and everything in it. Warning messages may be tricks. Beware.”
Volkov paused. No one should sign his own death warrant. But then he thought: This is not a choice, after what they did to Bucha and Mariupol—and to my own son….
Sharing here images and a passage of text in The Far Side of the Desert.
Stephen smiled as she left, but when he saw Eri and the other men, he said, “We need to get out of here.”
As Monte settled into the red velvet booth, he took hold of her arm and lifted her from the seat. “Now!”
Monte pulled her arm free. “Who are you?”
(Over the years I’ve accumulated a running list of words I haven’t known from two main sources: WordDaily and WordGenius)
Shambolic
/sham-bol-ik/
Part of speech: adjective
1. Chaotic, disorganized, or mismanaged
Examples:
“The play was a disaster and closed after a single shambolic performance.”
“I had to close the door on the shambolic mess in my closet and promise to deal with it later.”
Concatenate
/kon-kat-n-yet/
Part of speech: verb
1. Link (things) together in a chain or series.
Examples:
"One of the first things I learned in my computer science class was to concatenate a list of variables."
“I had notes from many different sources, so I stopped to concatenate them into one outline.”
“The vacation days concatenated together until they seemed almost identical.”
I’ve spoken at bookstores, university classes, book luncheons and in-person and zoom book clubs and look forward to more ahead. I enjoy giving readings and addressing audiences in many venues and moderating discussions on a wide range of topics and most of all meeting readers.
Click here for a list of future and past public events.
Or fill out the speaking request form to schedule an event.
I like engaging with readers so if you are in a Reading Group or Book Club and read one of my books, I’m glad to be in touch by email, zoom, or when possible in person. I can also suggest discussion topics.
Fill out the reading group form here to schedule a meeting.
Joanne, Thank you for sharing Pluto…and the other thought provoking information and ideas. As always, ideas to ponder and ways take action. Always appreciated!
Sally
Amazing. Thanks for sharing.
Malcolm