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Maria Varmazas (11:07)

Today's guest is author Joan Marie Gallaud. I'll let her take it from here.

Joan Marie Gallaud (11:14)

My name is Joan Marie Gallaud. I'm an author, mostly for children. I started making books when I was about 8 or 9 years old, but I didn't get paid for my writing until I was 12 years old. I had entered a writing contest. I got an honorable mention, so that means no prize. But my name was in the paper and an editor of a different newspaper, a weekly in my community saw that and wrote to me and asked if I'd like to write for the newspaper. So I started writing. I was a paid weekly columnist and I learned how to come up with ideas, I learned how to research, I learned how to get my mom to check my grammar, and I've been writing ever since.

Maria Varmazas (11:52)

That's amazing. Your writing career started way before most people's.

Joan Marie Gallaud (11:55)

I know that's I ended up studying biological sciences. I'd always loved the night sky and astronomy. And I have to say, you know, it was the children's books I read when I was a kid that, you know, impacted my interests as an adult. And I was reading books about birds and wildlife and astronomy and outer space. And you know, these are the things I'm interested in today. So the power of children's books is really important to put nonfiction books in kids hands. Not just because of, you know, the interest they'll develop, but because if a person has never seen a nonfiction children's book or a nonfiction book before adulthood, they're gonna struggle to keep up with the ones who have. Because the ones who have will know how to sort opinions and claims and misinformation from facts.

Maria Varmazas (12:43)

Yes, it's very, very important. I love that you have both a lot of experience in writing and also you have a scientific background. And I love what you just said about nonfiction because I think as a mother to a seven year old, a lot of what is often given to children, especially when we think of kid lit or picture books or whatever we want to call it, we think of fairy tales and imaginary stories. But my daughter inhales nonfiction books. She loves to learn facts.

Joan Marie Gallaud (13:12)

The thing about nonfiction is there's often elements of storytelling in there. They're, you know, it's. People think about the textbooks that they knew as children or something. And nonfiction today, modern nonfiction is very different. Of course. We use a lot of elements to attract and hold a child's attention. My series on astronomy is called Dot to dot in the sky and there's six books in the series. There's a book on stars with stories in the stars, stories of the planets, there's one on the moon, the zodiac, constellations, the clouds, because sometimes you can't see the stars. So I threw one in about the weather and the auroras. This series partners sky science with the myths, legends and folklore that people, early peoples and ancient cultures first told about the night sky. So a child who likes literature and reading and stories, but might not pick up a nonfiction book will see the sidebars and the introductory and the other parts that talk about the science, but also have that satisfaction of the stories. And then you have a child who actually loves fact based books, but maybe isn't reading literature, which is also good for different reasons. I'm hoping that kids will cross over and discover that you should pick up all books, not just the ones you think you'll like. It's not a connect the dots on the page book. It's a look up in the sky and connect the dots in the sky. So I show how to jump from one constellation to the other. There's, there's a few tricks to get your starter constellation. And once you find that, you just, you jump from one to the next and then you discover what people thought and, you know, knowing those stories connects us to people that we couldn't talk to anymore. Right. People from long ago. And it connects us across continents and across borders. So it's really a special thing. I think the night sky should be considered free entertainment. The night sky are your illustrations. But of course, sometimes we have light pollution and we can't see everything we want to see. So I wrote a book on light pollution as well. It's called Dark Matter's Nature's Reaction to Light Pollution.

Maria Varmazas (15:09)

I recently moved to a place with slightly darker skies than where I previously lived. Where there was this constant city glow and that it's. I'm really passionate about protecting dark skies. Although I don't have access to them myself very easily. So this is something that feels a little abstract, I think, to little ones who don't really know what a dark sky is. Cause they've never seen it. So I think that's a great book idea. Tell me more about it. Tell me more.

Joan Marie Gallaud (15:38)

Yeah, I'm happy to. Well, I got interested in it because of my love of the stars. And I realized that I wasn't always seeing the full constellation. I was missing a few stars. And I started to learn more about it. And I discovered that as well as being a serious problem for astronomers and scientists who need to understand our universe because we need to know what's out there. When they study distant stars, they are able to learn about what our sun might do. And our sun impacts our life every day with, you know, it causes our weather and solar flares affect all our technology and things like that. But the more I learned about it, the more I learned that every species of animal is impacted by light at night. And I thought kids are going to care about the animals because that, you know, kids generally love animals. And so the book talks about the night sky, but it also talks about how animals are impacted by it. So I wrote this book, I put all my facts together, I sent it off to a publisher. And the publisher said, you know, I think you need a narrative. And I said, what do you mean? Do you want me to sneak my facts into a novel? And he said, no, why don't you include stories from your own life about how you got interested in nature and wildlife and the night sky. And we'll put that all together. And so it was the funnest thing I did, I think, as a writer, was to make a list of stories from my own life on a theme and see how I could connect that to the science. And so the book is actually a childhood memoir paired with light pollution. You won't find anything else like that. The book is written for ages 8 to 12 or 9 to 13, you know, depending on who's reviewing it. But a lot of adults read the book or use the book for Outreach. And the idea is that somebody reading these stories would say, oh, I did something like that, or I didn't know about that. I didn't know that meant something. I didn't know that mattered. I didn't know that was impacting, you know, the larger world. And people often talk about living in cities and saying, well, I have no wildlife to protect, but in fact, you do because all our light that escapes from our homes is contributing to sky glow and sky glow. You know, if you, if you're driving in, driving on the highway toward a town and you can see the city or the town long before you're there, that that glow of light is affecting migrating birds and other species. So there's a lot of reasons for everybody to learn more about this topic and close their blinds, shut their lights, only use as much light as is necessary, and that kind of thing.

Maria Varmazas (17:59)

I ardently hope that there is greater awareness of just what light pollution does to the broader ecosystem, because I know those of us who really, really are passionate about it have known about it for a long time. But sometimes I wonder if that message is getting out. So I'm so, so glad that you've written about this and that kids, kids can do such amazing things. And especially when we let them know that there's something that they can control and there's something that they can have influence over, like turning off lights. And gosh, doesn't every parent want their kids to turn off the darn lights?

Joan Marie Gallaud (18:31)

That's right. Absolutely. That's what parents want. I remember leaving them on. My mom would say, are you related to Edison? And so that was my reminder. That was my reminder to turn off the lights. But it is something, you know, it's a problem with the solution and kids can make a difference. And I actually have a book called make youe Mark Make a Difference, A Kid's Guide to Standing up for People, Animals and the Planet. And in that book, I specifically talk about, you know, a wide range of topics. But I, of course, I have a whole, I have a whole chapter in there on space issues and including light pollution.

Maria Varmazas (19:07)

You are at a NASA social with my producer, Alice Carus. That's how we met you. And you are at something very inspiring. So I would love to hear about your experience at the launch and also how, what you might take with you from that in your work as you move forward.

Joan Marie Gallaud (19:26)

I was very thrilled to be part of the NASA social for the Crew 9 launch to the International Space Station. I mean, it was just so exciting to be there in person. Watching a rocket with humans on board take off. And one of the special moments for me was seeing the astronauts say goodbye to their families. They came out of the building where they were in quarantine and there was a great crowd around. We were not allowed to take pictures. And so we're really in the moment. And it just meant so much to me to be there and then later to see the rocket, you know, with them on board, taking off, it's powerful. And having behind the scene tours and being able to speak to subject experts who had stories from different launches and different events over the years, it was, it was incredible. And so that will definitely inform my work. I've written a lot of nonfiction, but I do have one novel and it's fairly recent. It's called Rat Race to Space. And it's about a lab rat who wants to prove that his species should be part of a future mission to Mars. So he finds his way up to the International Space Station. And he's very modern. He has a YouTube channel and he's planning to take video evidence of his experiments on the astronauts. So I want to write a sequel to this book. And going to the NASA Social definitely gave me a chance to ask questions of people that may appear later in my next work.

Maria Varmazas (20:53)

Oh, that's so cool. Oh, I love that. What better way to get research for your work than to do what you just did? That's so neat. I'm thrilled that you had that chance.

Joan Marie Gallaud (21:03)

That's so great.

Maria Varmazas (21:04)

Joan, thank you so much for speaking to me today. And I have a lot of books I need to check out from my library now. So thank you so much for giving me amazing stories to also share with my daughter because your work sounds 100% like something I would want to read to her and also that she would want to read even without mom's influence. So that's always the best.

Joan Marie Gallaud (21:24)

Oh, it's been my pleasure. And if, you know, if anyone wants to learn more about my books, they can visit my website.

Maria Varmazas (21:31)

It's joangalott.com we'll be right back. Welcome back. Today, BepiColombo, a joint mission between ESA and JAXA, performed its fifth flyby of Mercury skimming 37,360 kilometers above the planet's surface. And while the spacecraft has flown closer before, this flyby is a significant scientific first. It's the maiden use of the MRTIS radiometer and Thermal Infrared Spectrometer, designed to analyze Mercury's surface in mid infrared wavelengths. So why are we skating past the first rock from the sun so many times. The measurements from bevicolombo will help scientists figure out what the minerals are on Mercury's surface, cluing us into the planet's composition and its fiery past as the closest world to the Sun. And this most recent flyby wasn't just about trying out the MIRTIS instrument. Several other instruments were activated to study Mercury's magnetic field, surface radiation, and even its interaction with the solar wind, providing a broader look at the small but enigmatic planet. And all of these flybys are critical Practice runs for BepiColombo's main mission, which begins in 2026, when the spacecraft enters Mercury's orbit. And if you thought there wasn't much to learn about Mercury, think again. There is plenty of mystery in one small package, and certainly this mission's namesake thought so, as the mission is named after Giuseppe Bepi Colombo, and he's an engineer who studied Mercury and figured out that it rotates on its own axis three times in every two orbits of the Sun. That's kind of odd. Certainly he's a worthy namesake for this mission. And as we learn more about Mercury, we can extrapolate a great deal about planetary evolution in extreme environments. Like being right next to a star. How's that for extreme? With its searing heat and low gravity, Mercury challenges our understanding of how planets form and survive. The insights that BepiColombo will gather could, fingers crossed, will reshape our view of the inner solar system. See, this little planet has so much more to offer than just being in retrograde a few times a year. That's it for T minus for December 2, 2024, brought to you by N2K CyberWire. For additional resources from today's report, check out our show notes@spare.n2k.com we'd love to know what you think of this podcast. Your feedback ensures we deliver the insights that keep you a step ahead in the rapidly changing space industry. If you like the show, please share a rating and short review in your favorite podcast app. Also, please fill out the survey in the show notes or send an email to space2k.com we are privileged that N2K Cyberwire is part of the daily routine of the most influential leaders and operators in the public and private sector. From the Fortune 500 to many of the world's preeminent intelligence and law enforcement agencies, N2K makes it easy for companies to optimize your biggest investment Investment your people. We make you smarter about your teams while making your team smarter. Learn how@n2k.com this episode was produced by Alice Carus. Our associate producer is Liz Stokes. We're mixed by Elliot Peltzman and Trey Hester, with original music by Elliot Peltzman. Our executive producer is Jennifer Iban. Our executive editor is Brandon Karp. Simone Petrella is our president. Peter Kilpie is our publisher. And I am your host, Maria Varmazas. Thanks for listening. We will see you tomorrow.