to the back -- you're watching booktv television for serious readers. you can watch any program you see here online at booktv it.org. and now on booktv we want to introduce you to author melissa, she's written a book called under desert skies how tucson mapped the way to the moon an planet. melissa, who was gerard kiper? >> he's an astronomer and fascinating character in my book.

because he came to tucson in about 1960, and he was the only one with at the time who was really interested in studying the moon and the planet. so at the time astronomers were very interested and distancing galaxy and nebula that were far we an there were few people interested at all in study the moon it was close, it was boring. you can see it pretty clearly through a telescope there wasn't much there so gerard was only one who wanted to do that, and that became incredibly important in 1961 when suddenly the president aannounced we were going to send people to the moon. >> why did he come to tucson to study the moon? >> one with was reasons was because we have a beautiful dark desert skies, so it was already a hub of the astronomer and gerard would short isly make it a hub of planetary science quite a different field actually and my book i talk about tucson as birthplace of planetary science

not only dark skies and we have clear, you know, a clear view of the planets. we have these wonderful tall mountains all around where gerard could set up telescopes and he set up telescopes dedicated to studying the moon and planets which was essentially unheard of at the time. >> how was astronomy different than planetary science. >> astron is mothers study things that are far away certainly like nebula, galaxy and star clusters and planetary science study things that were close to us so we have our own solar system, these are generally rocky bodies or -- you know gashing bodies or if you want to study planets you have to understand things that astron is mothers don't need you have to understand geology and atmospheric science so a very different type of field. starting to change just more recently because they've discovered extra solar planets out beyond an you need techniques from both fields to study that. you need geology and you have to

have very powerful telescopes looking at things so far away. >> who was funding professor kiper? >> let me think about that for a second, you know when he first came to the university of arizona he was welcomey to have a supportive president at the university to have supportive departments thing like geology and atmospheric sciences so very original planetary laboratory which is now quite large an quite famous was actually set up in the institute of atmospheric physics which is what it was called at the timage atmospheric physics department this seems strange you would think the natural place would be to go to the astronomy department but that department didn't really want gerard kiper they wrnght interested in studying the moon or planet those things were boring. so he actually ended up in institute of atmospheric fizz ukes that's where everything started in tiny hubs that they have. >> so can you draw a line between gerard kiper cometology tucson in 1960 and neil

armstrong steps on moon in july of 1969. >> i can draw a very direct line so all dollar with that famous photographer of neil armstrong footprint in the moon. and what a lot of people don't know is that -- that repghts an incredible tie jump for american engineers and ingenuity but also for scientists because at the time that president kennedy made announcement that we were going to the moon, nobody knew what the moon was made out of. and they were there are theories at the time that the moon was just a statically charged ball of dust if you set an astronaut there they would sink into the depghts and never come back again so people thought that was ridiculous but we didn't know and couldn't prove with the information that we had and tiny lunar mapping group which is mostly students, were out here in tucson making maps of the moon studiesing composition of the moon and they were able to prove that the moon was solid enough to bare an astronaut's qaight that research they were

doing here and that footprint is personal for those in tucson because people in tucson ones that proved that was possible. >> so at what point did nasa pick up with gerard kipersome >> very early on in the 1960s. so nasa, of course, was working on the apollo missions which going to send astronauts to the moon but missions before that that were intended to study the moon and get that information that we needed about the moon. and so in the early 1960s they started sending spacecraft called rangers up to the moon and they were hard landers what that means is essentially spacecraft that crash lands on sphafts moon, and that idea was just to get back photographs spacecraft wasn't going to survive but photos as it was going down and first several of these that they try to send were all failures. and i think it was about 1964 they decided to reare organization the whole project and they called up gerard kiper they asked him to lead this team. and so gerard kiper led team finally that got a successful

ranger a ranger 7 that successfully got first close why photograph of the moon. >> another character in your book under desert skies is u.n. withcan kier who is that? >> incredibly important member of that team the ranger team, so he was such a fascinating person because he was amateur astronomer and he was from england and joined am lture association that was making a little map of a moon again something not a lot were doing and melt gerard kiper at a meeting and at that meeting jer rartd had had a memo saying would anyone like to help me make map of the moon there were 400 people at that meeting and only whittier replied he brought in family out to america, it was intended to be a temporary thing and told me he was going back to england when it was all over and ended up staying maps of the moon for this incredible american endeavor to put astronauts on the moon. >> so melissa, what happened to

gerard kiper after 1969? >> so -- he -- he of course founded this wonderful laboratory that we have here in tucson lunar and plan story laboratory and he knew about the time that the 1970s rolled around that that that laboratory was not going to last it was not going to be able to continue doing its research unless they also became a teaching dpght. as they have incredible vision he wasn't as a person necessarily interested in teaching but interested in research but he had this incredible vision to know that it was going to to trickle away and 79ed to get down to moon but further out to solar system he was going to immediate to make sure his laboratory would last so he found the department of plan story sciences. which was, of course, still here at the university of arizona today passed on baton to dlearkts came after him to keep both laboratory and department going. >> what kind of work is the lunar and plan story laboratory doing is today? >> the laboratory is doing all kiengdz of incredible work

today, of course, the started with a moon but didn't end there. so -- scientists there and alumni of that department have been involved i think in every major space station mission that went sent into the solar system an incredible thing. they -- university of arizona first to have ground control of the mission to really run a mission from here at the university that was phoenix mars mission which landed many mars in 2008. and now we're working on second one they're now doing the rex mission which is -- out there right now that is headed for an asteroid to bring back a sample of an asteroid. >> when did you get intrelsed in this story? >> that's a wonderful question. so i've always been interested in space and astronomy i think if you grow up in tucson you have to because of our beautiful dark skies came to university of arizona to study science and i got a job with the collector who

was director michael drake, and my task was like he described it in a single line to me he said your job is to interview the old timers and capture their stories before they're gone. and so i think one of the first people i talk to was um whitaker and dozen other people and by the end of that i said there are so many more stories to capture let me keep working on this. and so i did that for about four years. i worked my way through, you know, under my undergraduate degree by doing interviews. i didn't know right away that it was going to be a book. it actually wasn't until michael drake passed away in 20 o 11 that i sort of pulled off that writing out of a drawer and thought i think i can turn this into a story that would honor his vision that that was an important thing to capture. smtion that was under desert skies how tucson mapped its way to the moon and planets what are you in tucson now? >> i'm actually i live up in flagstaff now and i didn't know i was going to be a science

writer so this project launched me into that career, and i'm working on -- a second book out called mythical river working with on a third one which is going to be about planetary catastrophes. mythical river what's the topic? >> water issues in the southwest. so again it's my second book -- and kind of my vision for that book there was a -- a mythical river that map makers evented in buena research have a that staid on maps for 25 years but it didn't exist and no river flowing from the great salt lake to california but this vision of water abundant quarter that is not actually here in the southwest so i use that as metaphor to talk about how we're outstripping desert ability to sustain us. >> how does a city like tiew get its watersome >> well a city like tucson like phoenix gets some of its water from aqua fore

but a lot of it comes from 300 miles away the colorado river so that's a very long canal running our quarter to us so one of the things i read extensively about is can we live here by constantly bringing water from other places or can we -- learn to live within our means? space flight is not on the forefront like in the 60s and 70s and space shuttle what's the ltl doing these days? >> lunar plan story lab is doing wonderful things they're still lots and lots of research about our own solar system only recently we got the first closeup picture of pluto for example which were fantastic. all kind of surprises there. and then, of course, there's -- other things besides plants that study for example are asteroids rex mission is so important because we think asteroids may be thing that heeded our planet with life. seeded or planet with organic molecule and with water a hypothesis they want to test did that really happen that was