The National Parks are a living record of America's past.

Living here in the San Francisco Bay Area I marvel at the diverse culture that sprouts from our surrounding parks and open spaces. In Golden Gate Park alone you can practice fly-fishing, sail a model boat, ride a horse, play golf, kick a soccer ball, tackle rugby, or pitch a horseshoe, bocce or baseball. You can see where the buffalo roam or spin round and round on an antique carousel. Skate, bike, row a boat, play music, dance to the beat of your own drum and stop to smell the roses. Nearby, down at Ocean Beach surfers ride the waves and kids make sand castles. Stroll the promenade at Crissy Field and you’ll see people soaking up the sun on the beach, flying kites, fishing off the pier or windsurfing under the Golden Gate. Go to Fort Funston where you can run your dogs down to the beach or launch your hang glider off the cliff and soar into the sky. I can go on and on but you get the picture. And that’s just here in San Francisco! Add the Peninsula, North, South and East Bay then combine all the city, county, state and federal parks with all the regional open spaces and count your blessings. It’s been said that if you go to any neighborhood in Bay Area, there is a park or a trailhead less than a mile away. These places are calling us outside to play. And in the process they are building our communities, and in many ways defining who we are and who we want to be.

Of all the activities happening in the parks, probably the most important and rewarding is volunteering to help preserve and protect these amazing places. I urge you all to pitch in. Contact your local regional parks and open space district and see what you can do to help. It’s up to all of us to make sure these wonderful places are saved and maintained for everyone in the future.

If you've watched the show, or are reading this blog about the National Parks, the chances are you also know that filmmaker Ken Burns is about to release his next series "The National Parks: America's Best Idea." Through our role in the development and distribution of the series, KQED is collecting viewer stories about their own experiences with these hallowed places. Let us know what these marvelous open spaces mean to you by sharing your story. We’d love to hear about your favorite park, Bay Area or beyond.

Watch the National Parks Special: Bringing the Parks to the People television story online.

Are they related to me? I still don't know…When last I left you, I was searching for my great-great grandmother’s DNA in my own DNA.  Remember, legend has it she was Cherokee and I wanted to confirm the legend with a genetic test from a company called 23andMe.

In my last blog post, I showed how the two most powerful ancestry tests, mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) and Y chromosome, were useless to me in my hunt. Now I want look at the rest of my DNA.  So here we go!

The Y chromosome and mtDNA are a small fraction of my DNA—something like 0.8% of the total DNA in one of my cells.  But they are incredibly useful because they change very little from generation to generation.  The mtDNA I got from my mom is probably exactly like hers.  Same with most of the Y I got from my dad.

The other 99.2% of my DNA is a lot trickier to look at from an ancestry perspective because it has changed a lot from generation to generation over time.  For example, the chromosomes I inherited from my parents are not the same as the ones they have.  I got a mix of their chromosomes

For example, my mom had two copies of chromosome 1 (and two copies of her other 22 chromosomes too).   As you know, she passed one chromosome 1 to me (my dad gave me my other one).  But, through a process called recombination, her two copies of chromosome 1 swapped DNA so that I got a hybrid of her two copies.  I inherited a unique chromosome never before seen.

This is all well and good from a survival of the species point of view, but it is a problem for ancestry testing.  Imagine that instead of my mom, we look at my Cherokee great-great grandmother.  She has just had a child who inherited a mix of her chromosome 1’s.  This chromosome will look Native American and the child would appear half Native American.

Actually, the test isn’t perfect yet and so there isn’t yet a “Native American” set per se.  Instead, here is how 23andMe describes Native American DNA in their tests:

“…people who identify themselves as Native American exhibit fairly consistent Ancestry Painting proportions of about 75% Asian and 25% European, plus or minus 10%.”

This means the chromosomes the child got from his or her mom won’t look Native American but instead will look 75% Asian and 25% European.  (See a realted post of mine elsewhere for why it looks like this.) Now imagine that this half Native American child grows up and has my grandfather as his or her son.

My grandpa will inherit a mix of his parents’ DNA too.  In this case the Native American DNA will mix with the European DNA to create a hybrid.  On average, you would now see something along the lines of 37.5% Asian (this is a simplification but it gets us into the ballpark of the number we might expect).

Each generation would see, on average, a continued dilution of this Asian part.  My dad would have 18% Asian, I would have 9%, etc.  Here are my ancestry results (click the image to enlarge):

Not a hint of Asian.  Looks like my great-great grandma wasn't Cherokee.  Or was she?

There are lots of ways she could still be Cherokee.  First off, I don’t know how solid the 75% number is for all Native Americans.  I don’t know how many Native Americans are in their database.  I also don’t know how much variation there will be tribe to tribe.

Secondly, you may have noticed that I was very careful to always say, “on average.”  This is because the recombinations don’t have to be a 50-50 swap.  It is true that if you look at a large number of recombination events, the average will be 50%.  But individual recombination events can be biased towards one or more chromosomes.  Occasionally you’ll get mostly one chromosome and sometimes mostly the other.

Sort of like flipping a coin—do it enough and you’ll get pretty close to half heads and half tails.  But if you flip a coin twice, you might get one head and one tail.  And you might not.  Half the time you’ll get two heads or two tails.

This is less a problem than you might think with our chromosomes since the recombination is spread over 23 pairs with each pair being independent of the others.  But it can still throw a monkey wrench into the works.  23andMe actually has a nice chart that hints at this by giving the most likely range of possibilities.  Unfortunately, this chart didn’t come up with my results and I had to stumble on it while I was playing around.

Using the chart, I can see that the bottom end of my expected results in 0.24% “Native American” (if I am reading the chart correctly).  That is pretty low and it seems like a pretty minor mistaken assumption at the beginning might knock this down to zero.

So where am I after this?  Still in the dark.  This is actually how many genetic tests end up.

The positive result tells you a lot.  Had there been Native American DNA, that would have been a slam dunk.  (This isn’t always the case with genetic tests but it would be here.)  But there wasn’t.  Which means, given that I was on the edge of detection, that she may or may not have been Cherokee.

Now, this isn’t 23andMe’s fault.  The test itself couldn’t be conclusive given how far back we need to go and the DNA tests that 23andMe offers.  In fact, 23andMe does an excellent job of presenting the data.  There are pretty chromosome paintings, graphs superimposed on world maps, etc.  All very nice.

I am still worried that the explanations that go along with these images assume an awful lot of knowledge that most people might not have.  Without that knowledge, it can be hard to assess the significance of a certain result.  Next blog that’ll become even more important as I tackle health conditions.

Sand dunes near Stovepipe Wells, in Death Valley. Photo: Craig Miller.The quietest place I've ever been was in a national park and I don't think I'll ever forget what it was like.

Now, okay, "quiet" is a somewhat subjective thing. When I lived on the upper (way upper) west side of Manhattan in the 1980s, any interval without hearing a car alarm seemed like blessed relief. Quiet can be measured, of course, with sound pressure meters. Anything below about 40 decibels is pretty darn quiet for most people's purposes.

The National Park Service (NPS) says the quietest place it has yet measured is a spot in Great Sand Dunes National Park, where Vicki McCusker, who helps oversee the natural sounds program for the Park Service, says it was "bottoming out" their meters.

I've never been there but it's hard to imagine greater quietude than an afternoon I spent in Death Valley. Coincidentally this was also on a sand dune, near Stovepipe Wells. It was also Christmas Day, which kept the tourist traffic to a minimum. It was at a point in my life when I was in desperate need of some deep introspection, so I parked my car along Highway 190 and trekked into the dunes, found an accommodating slope and sat down. Occasionally a fly (or something) would buzz by. Other than that, the loudest thing was the buzzing in my own head, which I can only hope would've been inaudible to anyone with me.

It's interesting how, when things get really quiet, our bodies try to make up for it with ringing ears and internal chaos. The noted bioacoustician Bernie Krause talks about the time he and his wife, Kat were hosting guests from New York, who literally had to leave the Krause's semi-secluded Glen Ellen "sanctuary" because the night-time quiet was creeping them out.

I asked Krause what he could draw from that. "Well, it tells me that we’re more insane than I ever thought in the first place," he mused. "I mean, we’re definitely verging on pathological.  Because it’s exactly those kinds of sounds–the urban acoustic envelope in which we enfold ourselves–that kind of urban noise that’s driving up the numbers of prescriptions for Prozac."

Surveys of national park visitors would seem to bear that out.  In the early 1990s, NPS surveyed 15,000 visitors in 39 parks, about noise issues (NPS manages 391 "units" nationwide, 58 of which are designated as "parks"). More than nine out of ten visitors surveyed cited "enjoyment of natural quiet" as a reason for visiting. This survey provided some juice for the ongoing natural sounds program in the parks.

An open question is: where does it go from here? Much of the current effort in the parks appears to be geared toward developing "air tour management plans," a response to concerns that first arose over the increasingly crowded skies above the Grand Canyon. McCusker told me that while aircraft overflights are the most pervasive noise issue across the parks, the most common complaint is probably over loud motorcycles (note to "straight-pipe" Harley owners).

Krause, who conducted a year-long project documenting soundscapes in Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park, hopes the research will also be used to develop new rules governing on-the-ground noise pollution. "If the parks can set aside places where people can go and hear the natural world as it is, at any season of the year, then that will be a really big benefit for visitors coming to the parks," he says. "Otherwise, you’re seeing the parks with the wrong soundtrack. It’s like watching Star Wars without a soundtrack."

So check out this four and a half minute “journey” I produced with Bernie Krause, founder of Wild Sanctuary. It takes you from the familiar cacophony of the urban soundscape to a serene spot in Sequoia Park.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.

Listen to the radio report, "Soundscapes of National Parks" online.

Map of Moon water; blue indicates higher concentrations of detected water molecules. Credit: NASA/Moon Mineralogy Mapper instrument.Here it comes! A veritable tidal wave of discovery on Earth's Moon….

In one short week, NASA's LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission will quite literally come to an end—a fiery, spectacular end as it deliberately crashes into the lunar South Pole crater Cabeus A in hopes of kicking up enough material for us to detect the presence of water. If you want to see the action as it happens, come up to Chabot Space & Science Center on Friday morning, October 9, 3:00 AM to watch NASA's live simulcast and–weather and the gods of astronomy permitting–the view through Chabot's 36-inch telescope, "Nellie."

In recent months, NASA has been sending a lot of acronyms—excuse me: spacecraft—to the Moon: LRO with it's LROC, LEND, and LOLA instruments; LCROSS (which I've heard some call "LaCROSS," for the record) with its VIS, NIR, MIR, TLP, VSP, NSP—oh, the list goes on!

The fact of the matter is MOON spells "Moon." Whether or not we do end up returning humans to the Moon in the next decade, which is partly what reconnaissance by LRO and LCROSS and their arrays of acro-instrumentation is for, there are still things to be learned about our nearest neighbor in space—and water is the word at present.

Even as LCROSS and its Centaur-booster-rocket-turned-lunar-clobbering-device follow their final fatal trajectory toward Cabeus A, its launch buddy LRO, now in an orbit around the Moon and beginning to send back scientific results and images, may have already detected telltale signs of the wet stuff—which on the Moon won't be wet, but frozen solid, of course; liquid water cannot persist in the Moon's airless environment.

LRO's LEND (Lunar Exploration Neutron Detector) instrument is designed to find signs of water molecules by measuring neutron radiation emanating from the lunar surface. The Moon is constantly bombarded by high energy cosmic radiation, which forms radioactive isotopes in the soil that in turn emit neutrons. By measuring the abundance and speed distribution of the neutrons, details of soil chemistry can be inferred. The presence of light atomic nuclei–in particular the lightest of all, hydrogen, a component of water—in the soil reduces the levels of neutron emission. That drop in neutron radiation is the telltale scientists are looking for.

While LRO scientists want to make further measurements before concluding the presence water ice concentrations, observations from three other spacecraft—NASA's M3 instrument (Moon Mineralogy Mapper) aboard India's Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft and the Cassini and EPOXI spacecraft—have mutually confirmed the presence of water and hydroxyl molecules (hydroxyl is a water molecule missing one of its two hydrogen atoms) in the soils of the Moon, across much wider expanses than the confines of dark polar crater floors.

Cassini and EPOXI made measurements as they flew past the Moon to their respective destinations (Saturn, and a comet), and measurements have been made by M3 from lunar orbit. The detection of water by these spacecraft doesn't mean seas of liquid or glaciers of ice, or even blanketing layers of gaseous water vapor, but rather relatively small amounts of water and hydroxyl molecules attached to, or "stuck to," other materials in the top few millimeters of soil.

This thin "confetti" of water molecules appears to come and go with lunar daytime, forming during the cold, dark two-week-long lunar night and diminishing under the baking light of the Sun.

So, right now, MOON spells water (M3 et al), water (LRO), and possibly more water (LCROSS, on October 9th)—at least, the evidence seems to be mounting!

Simone Crew (left) is now a freshman at Haverford College in Pennsylvania.

Today’s episode of QUEST-TV includes a 2-minute segment that marks our first collaboration with the San Francisco spoken word presenter Youth Speaks and The Redford Center, based in Provo, Utah. For the past four years, these organizations have been putting on a contest for young spoken word artists who perform poems about environmental themes. In our first installment of QUEST-TV’s Youth Speaks Green feature, 18-year-old San Francisco poet Simone Crew performs excerpts from her poem Yasmeena, which she originally performed at this contest. You can download a copy of the complete poem here.

Through Youth Speaks Green, we’ll explore how young people in the Bay Area view the challenges of becoming green. We’ll be looking beyond clean fuels, efficient vehicles and solar panel rebates and delving instead into the personal. Crew, who is now a freshman at Haverford College in Pennsylvania, wrote the poem when she was 16 and centered it on her experiences with an eight-year-old girl called Yasmeena, whom she had babysat. Through Yasmeena’s insistent questions, Crew began to feel the weight of the responsibility to conserve the natural world for her. In an engaging play of mirrors, we as the audience get to watch Crew observing Yasmeena, as Yasmeena makes sense of the world around her.

Crew will be performing a new environmentally-themed poem at the Sundance Film Festival in January of 2010, as part of a Youth Speaks team.

In coming episodes, we hope to present you with the work of other talented young Bay Area poets in our Youth Speaks Green segments.

Watch the Youth Speaks Green television story online.

Zoloft is a popular drug used for the treatment of depression symptoms.

Depression is hardly new. The Roman physician Galen, in the second century A.D., expounded on the prevailing medical view that four bodily fluids, or humors, existed within all people but that the unique variation of these humors within people resulted in individual differences among people in their behavior and temperament. An excess of black bile, for example, indicated a melancholic personality.

Fortunately, a lot of scientific progress has been made since then in understanding depression to be an organic, brain-based medical condition that afflicts millions. In fact, an individual has a ten to fifteen percent lifetime risk of developing a major depressive episode. But as Dr. Karl Deisseroth, a Stanford neuroscientist and psychiatrist, told me during our interview for “Illuminating Depression”, “Diagnosis is a big challenge because in psychiatry, we don’t have a lab test. There’s not a blood draw that you can do as you might to check how your liver is doing or how your thyroid function is doing.” So given that the diagnosis of depression is based on clinical observation (most often done by a primary care physician), one can’t help feel that hard, empirical understanding of depression is somewhat lacking, especially when compared to diseases of other organs like the heart and lungs where tests do exist to gauge the presence of pulmonary and cardiovascular diseases.

This was the most interesting observation for me when working on this story. Imagine a medical disease that afflicts eighteen million people in the U.S. (26 million if you include Bipolar Disorder), for which more than 160 million prescriptions were filled in 2008, that is one of the leading causes of disability in the U.S., but a disease for which no definitive medical model of pathology exists. Increasingly, doctors are prescribing antidepressants to treat not just depression but a host of other medical conditions, including chronic pain and insomnia, some of which can co-occur with depression. Sure, we’ve made strides since the time of Galen’s bodily humors and the Freudian view of misplaced hostility and mourning to explain depression, but in some respects, we’re still in the dark about why some people get depression while others don’t, why some people respond to one treatment and not another, or why one person will suffer from a form of depression that is less or more severe than another person. This lack of clear, empirical understanding comes at an awful price to victims of depression, as they encounter remarks from people that tell them to “snap out of it”, implying that they somehow can control the emotional crumbling and dark ideations that accompany the disease.

The consequence of all this is that it’s incredibly tough to create effective, lasting treatments for the disease if we can’t exactly track how the disease affects not only specific regions of the brain but the activity among individual brain cells in regions that may not have even been known to play an integral role in the disease. My layperson’s view is that treating depression currently is a bit like bringing in a car to the mechanic and telling him to fix it but there’s a catch – the mechanic can’t get under the hood to observe directly what’s wrong with the car. We suspect that the problem is with the engine but good luck with opening it up and peering into its pistons. So the mechanic attempts to work on the engine but indirectly, and whatever repairs are attempted may affect the engine but they may also have unwanted effects on the car’s transmission, muffler, timing belt, etc.

Fortunately, advances in imaging techniques like two-photon microscopy and fMRI are elucidating the activity of the depressed brain, allowing the previously impenetrable forest of billions of neurons to be explored, to see their pathways altered, their branches pruned by the disease. And scientists like Philippe Goldin and Kelly Werner are compiling biomarkers like DNA and brain blood flow activity to see if those biomarkers can help predict if people suffering from anxiety and/or depression will respond more favorably to cognitive behavioral therapy than to mindfulness meditation, for example. Dr. Deisseroth is using genetically engineered, photosensitive proteins implanted into rodents’ brains to control brain activity at the level of individual neurons.

Dr. M. Bret Schneider told me during our interview, “A real cure for depression is gonna involve being able to selectively affect those portions of the brain which don’t function properly in depression… But fathoming the huge number of possibilities in each brain with every brain being a little bit different than every other one, is gonna require individualized solutions and will be a scientific feat.” I suppose that with a disease as complex as depression, where one’s individual genetic makeup can influence the kinds of side effects one may experience with an antidepressant, it’s apropos that the future of treating and eventually curing it will entail personalized medicine. Until then, let’s hope that more people bring psychiatry into the research lab to study illnesses like depression, for it’s only through the methodical rigor of science that we have the best hope for curing depression.

Watch the Illuminating Depression television story online.

Visualization of possible chess move sequences (try it here)

Artificial Intelligence has always held a special affinity for games. Chess, in particular, was long considered a realm reserved for exquisite human intelligence: the greatest chess players are called Grandmasters; a large percentage of them are eccentric Russian introverts. Gary Kasparov's defeat, by IBM's specialized supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997, was heralded as a major milestone (he contends the match was unfair). But while the dominance of chess-playing software is culturally significant, does it matter for AI?

Chess, like Checkers, Connect-4, and Go, is a game of perfect information. That is, everything useful for choosing your next move is right there on the board (it would be nice to know what your opponent will do next, but you can assume that your opponent is just trying to make the best possible move too). If you had a computer powerful enough, it could consider every possible next move, every possible response, and so on, and finally deduce, absolutely, how to guarantee a particular outcome. To do this is to solve chess, to answer the question: is it possible for white to force a win? Checkers is solved (both players can force a draw). Connect-4 is solved (the first player can force a win). Chess has too many possible board positions to be solved anytime soon.

Deep Blue can compete with human players by searching many moves ahead, testing all possible combinations, and choosing the next move that leaves its opponent with the worst best option. This approach is called minimax search. Since the computer can't search through to all possible checkmates, it searches to a given depth and scores the resulting board position by the pieces each player still has (roughly speaking, a pawn is 1 point, knights and bishops are 3 points each, a rook is 5 points, and the queen is 8 points). Using this rubric, or heuristic, and searching 10-15 moves into the future, makes for an extremely formidable opponent.

Minimax theory was established by John von Neumann in 1928 and the algorithm was improved in the 1950s and 60s to run more efficiently. Deep Blue contains no general innovation that improves significantly on these now classic techniques. The heuristic for evaluating boards has been refined, and the program has a huge database of well-known openings and end-game sequences-when 5 or fewer pieces are left on the board. Thus, Deep Blue is less a marvel of Artificial Intelligence than of engineering: its success is a direct product of the number of positions it can consider in a second (200 million). This is the Brute Force method of problem solving at its finest.

Most real world problems are not like chess. Political maneuvering, for example, is a game of imperfect information, where each player must guess at underlying motives and resources from superficial clues. The language of political, and in particular war-time gamesmanship, has shifted markedly away from chess… towards poker. Obama tipped his hand, Chavez is bluffing, Ahmedinejad is all in.

And Artificial Intelligence for poker is still far behind humans. The University of Alberta's Polaris system earned a narrow victory at the 2^nd man-machine poker match last July, but the competition involved heads-up limit poker: one-on-one games where the only possible bets are $10 or $20. Compared with the main event at the World Series of Poker, which has no betting limit, and about 10 players at one table, this is something of a "toy" problem. Recent research focuses on how to model opponents-that is, automatically refining the software's understanding of the meaning of each players' bets as information is gathered about how those players play.

Over the next decade, I would guess that poker research, perhaps backed by military funding, will expand significantly. And unlike Deep Blue, poker software that can dominate a table full of professional players, will be the product of significant advances in the field of Artificial Intelligence.

Recycling graywater from sinks, showers, and washing machines to irrigate your garden is the latest in green living—but until recently, was against the law.The home performance community, with its focus on energy efficient, safe, healthy, comfortable, affordable, and sustainable housing, is like a pot of water in full boil. Recent legislation, such as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, is infusing DOE’s Weatherization Assistance program with a rush of funds and the expectations of a million homes weatherized each year. Proposed legislation like the climate bill passed by the House of Representatives in June promises more money and even greater expectations of houses transformed.

The Department of Labor has received hundreds of millions of dollars to support training programs for home performance professionals—from weatherization technicians to high-end builders and remodelers—and workers for the new renewable energy economy. Community colleges across the nation are gearing up for crowded classrooms full of future green jobbers. Groups such as Green for All are serving as the conscience of the movement, and remind us that the new economy has to include those who stand to benefit the most, since the old economy hasn’t served them well. Labs such as Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and private companies are working at a fevered pace to assist the push for greener housing with advanced modeling tools, statistical data, some of the best minds and hearts, and new technology.

There is also more energy in water, so to speak. In late July, the California Department of Housing and Community Development made a proposal for a new graywater standard to the California Building Standards Commission. The new standard was almost immediately accepted. Graywater is shower, sink, and laundry water used for gardening and for toilet flushing that would otherwise be wasted. It’s taken a while for the state to figure out how to let its citizens use this water legally. Thousands have been using it illegally until now. The standards don’t address using graywater to flush toilets, and there are restrictions. For example, graywater from washing diapers cannot be used, and graywater cannot be used to water edible roots or edible plants with the edible parts in contact with soil.

California uses up to 10% of its energy treating, moving, or heating water, so saving water saves energy as well.

The last time we reported on Swine flu, or 2009 H1N1 virus, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was considering whether or not to invest in a vaccine for the new influenza strain.

Now, after several delays, the first batches of vaccines — first, a nasal spray version, then an injectible vaccine — is due to hit hospitals and clinics across the country (and around the world) in the first weeks of October. It's up to each state to decide which groups to prioritize, but pregnant women, young children, and those with certain preexisting conditions such as asthma may be considered priorities. Over the following weeks, the flow of vaccines, produced at five different labs across the country, will steadily increase until, officials hope, any American who chooses to be vaccinated has access to a dose.

To learn more about where to get the vaccine, call: (800) CDC-INFO (800 232-4636) or visit www.cdc.gov/flu.

Here's another good resource for basic H1N1 vaccine info.

In this piece, we profile work taking place at the University of California, San Francisco's Viral Diagnostics and Discovery Center. This lab is home to the ViroChip – a powerful viral diagnostic tool that won its inventor, Joseph DeRisi, a MacArthur "Genius" Grant back in 2004. TheViroChip and other tools are critical to the fight against 2009 H1N1 . Among other things, they may be the first to alert us should the virus mutate into a form that's resistant to the leading antiviral drug, Tamiflu. (Several cases of Tamiflu-resistant 2009 H1N1 have already been reported, but so far they appear to be isolated incidents.)

They'll be looking out for another important mutation too: That's if 2009 H1N1 changes enough so that the current vaccine for it — the one coming out in October — no longer works. (This kind of subtle virus mutation is the reason we need new flu vaccines every year.) So far, this does not seem to be the case.

Listen to the Predicting Swine Flu radio report online.

The LCROSS satellite, launched on June 18th, is slowly making itself ready to smack into the moon in late October. A plume of dust 37 miles high will be produced, which may be visible from Earth (most likely Hawaii). The envy of the Mythbusters, this explosion is designed to find water in permanently shadowed areas of the moon. Much has been written on LCROSS, from historical perspectives to cost containment.

As the impact grows closer, NASA is making an effort to talk about the locally driven mission. Many of the upcoming talks are suitable for any audience, from kids to adults.

Luna Philosophie: Hitch-hiking to the Moon

Where: Scribd, 539 Bryant St. (2nd Floor), San Francisco

When: Wednesday, 9/23 6-8 PM

Cost: Free, RSVP to Delia.L.Santiago@nasa.gov

Details: Dr. Kim Ennico, LCROSS Payload Scientist and the LCROSS Payload Integration & Test Manager, will provide an overview of the NASA LCROSS mission and discuss how NASA has been expanding the concept of “participatory exploration” with LCROSS as an example. This will be a lively discussion.

Andrew Chaikin on LCROSS

Where: Chabot Space & Science Center

When: Saturday, 9/26 3-430 PM

Cost: Free with Museum Admission

Details: Author, speaker, and space journalist Andrew Chaikin joins Chabot visitors for a night of moon conversation and exploration. Using the detailed program Google Moon, which he helped to develop, Chaikin takes the visitor on a guided tour of the moon’s surface. Chaikin will also discuss the recent LCROSS mission and his extensive knowledge of the Apollo missions.

To the Moon: A Look at NASA’s Upcoming Lunar Impact Mission and the History of Moon Exploration

Where: Exploratorium

When: Sunday, 9/27 2-4 PM

Cost: Free with Museum Admission

Details: Take a trip to our nearest neighbor in space with renowned science journalist and space historian Andrew Chaikin. Relive the achievements of Apollo lunar astronauts and learn about the ambitious LCROSS mission, which will send a rocket crashing into the moon’s permanently shadowed regions to kick up huge plumes of debris in the hopes of uncovering deposits of ice. In addition, Exploratorium educators will give an entertaining and interactive overview of moon science.

QUEST on KQED Public Media.