Britain’s First Astronaut on the New Race to the Moon | Helen Sharman

Everybody's just William Shatner has something to say. Cat and Jetro box of oddities. The show is sammily. Weird things. What do you do when the woman you love dies? Well, of course you dig her up and you live with her. Aw. That is really mysterious. The strange, the bizarre, the unexpected. Listen on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. The box of oddities. A new space race is now properly underway with the successful launch and return of NASA's Artemis II rocket, which took four people around the moon. So the new era of space travel that we've talked about and waited for for so long is finally kicking off. And that's what we're getting into today on the world, the universe and us, for a new scientist. I'm Rowan Hooper and I'm delighted to be joined today by Helen Sharman of Imperial College London and Britain's first astronaut. Welcome, Helen. Thank you very much, Rowan. Always lovely to be with new scientists. Thank you. It was quite emotional this mission, wasn't it? Let's have a clip of the return and just relive that moment. Use the bakery to splash down, sending post-winning command now. Splash down confirmed. Copy splash down, waiting on VLDR. Splash down confirmed at 7.07 pm central time, 507 pm Pacific time. From the pages of Jules Verand to a modern day mission to the moon, a new chapter of the exploration of our celestial neighbor is complete. Integrity's astronauts back on Earth. Will you nervous, Helen, watching that? I was a little nervous because not so much the actual splash down, but it was more the re-entry. There'd been a bit of a problem with the heat shield on the first time and then in order to get around the problem, rather than properly fix it, there'd been this slightly different trajectory of re-entering, rather than doing a big skip off the atmosphere. They'd done a lot of time, little lift back into space again before they re-entered the atmosphere for the second time. So yes, I was just a tad nervous about how the thermal heat shield would all hold up for them, what's up, and know it. All it was just fantastic. And yes, when we heard their voices after the radio blackout, we'd be great. Of course, then the parachutes all opening up. One took a little bit longer, didn't it, than the others? So that was also a bit edge of the seat business, but then we'd splash down great relief, lovely. You mentioned the heat shield, and I was also a bit worried because there was some quite big gouges out from the Artemis I mission when they'd been testing that. And NASA had been a little bit untransparent about what was happening, hadn't they? Yeah, we'd start with it was all very transparent. So NASA showed us what the problem was, and then they recognized that it had been created because of this loft, so not loft, this skip back into space. So the idea was that when they came back through the atmosphere, the heat shield should have been porous enough so that any gases that were built up would nicely move through, pass through this heat shield into the upper layers of the atmosphere, everything should be fine. But what seemed to happen was that the surface got charred so that it was not porous. So when they then went back up into space again on this skip, those gases sputtered out, were trying to break out, you can imagine, they were building up, the pressure building up, and bits of these heat shield were literally blown away. Now NASA then said, well, if the astronauts had been inside, then the temperatures that they'd recorded would have been OK. But of course, in order to get around this, you don't know that it's going to be, it could be even worse the next time, but to get around it then, this second trajectory says that they weren't in space for so long after they'd already had a little bit of heating through the upper layers of the atmosphere. It all seemed to work in theory, and of course, there were tests done in the arctic facilities in NASA and other places, so they'd tested it as much as possible. But there's nothing like testing something in real life. Right. And this is a standard practice that you do all your testing, you do it as, including life support systems, as much as you possibly can. Then you put astronauts in it. And then you go a long way, rather than only you do. You don't, you don't, you're totally in one go. Yeah. So yeah, there was this Tad of nervousness, but clearly, I mean, either they were very lucky, or just people had just done their jobs absolutely brilliantly. And you know what was really phenomenal, I thought, was the calculations that have been made about the orbits. When we think about how far this spacecraft was traveling, and how accurate and precise, you know, both that they needed to be with their calculations in terms of the burns, the angles of trajectory and everything, and absolutely phenomenal calculations. So, you know, hats off to all of those teams, just superb work. Let's talk about, again, about the emotional value of this mission, because, I mean, you have to be of a certain age now to remember the Apollo missions. And so this was really an inspiration for a whole new generation who missed Apollo, isn't it? I hope so. I think there's a bit of a, sometimes a bit of a complacency of all the sort of it's been done when, why do it again? I never appreciated, you know, I was very young when Apollo's missions were going, but I do remember, you know, studying them at school. And, and didn't appreciate the amount of, you know, the complexity of it, really, the technology that was required, and how trained the astronauts needed to be, but also then, how flying by the seas of the pants they were, because they didn't really know what the surface of them was like and how it was going to be when they were getting close to it. So, all of that, I think, it's anyone who's start to delve into the details, and when we hear from NASA, and they have shared so much, haven't they? And that's been glorious. We've not only had all the press conferences, but we've had a lot of direct feeds from inside the spacecraft. You know, when you think that's, that's troubling, you know, a quarter of a million miles away, and we're getting those links live into our rooms. It's just really great the way that we've had that shared information. And of course, that's allowed us to share in, yes, in the complexity of the technology, but also, as you, you point out, all this emotion, and we've seen there are astronauts in there that they've shown their human size. They've not acted in this robotic kind of way. I'm going to show how, how clever a fighter pilot, I am or anything, they've shown that they are people enduring this mission as well as enjoying it. And, and, and, and behaving as part of one crew, and that's been, that's been a joy hasn't it? Yeah, it really has. We mentioned that it's a space race again. And, you know, we have the original US Soviet Union space race to get to the moon, which kind of ended when the US got there first. This time it's between the US and China. The Americans have effectively said that. They, we, we want to get there before beat China. What are the differences this time around that might make us hope that it's not going to fizzle out and this is really going to be a sustained, lead to a sustained presence on the moon? Yes, interesting is that it was a number of differences now. One, of course, is that China, I have no doubt they will put people on the moon, they will have operations on the moon and they will have sustained operations on the moon. And I think America is in no doubt about that as well. This isn't just a kind of a get there, whoever gets there first, then everybody else retreats and forgets about it. This is, China will do it regardless of whether America gets there first. And part of the reason to do this is because, because we want to get, get used to some of what's now being to this lunar economy, PWC have estimated this to be, billions, hundreds of billions of dollars and 140 billion by the 2040s, I mean, it's huge. Whether or not you think that's, that's a reason, less than it is another matter, but it's a lot of stuff going up there, a lot of money potentially to be made. But then there's this strategic part of the moon, this South Pole that is the real race to get hold of. So if you can get to this wonderful part and it's quite a big part of this crater, it's not tiny. So it's that. - Shackleton crater is that. - Yes, it's this, so this huge crater on the South Pole of the moon, which has got a great grip on the edge of it where sunlight falls almost all the time. So you can charge all of your electronics nice and easily. You've got ice inside this crater because it's being shaded from the sun because it's inside the crater. So we've got access to water because it's a crater, you've got all of that wonderful, we think science that we can understand about the moon, it's creases made by some sort of meteor. So what did that meteor leave behind? And what part of the moon, the subsurface did it expose? So we've got all of this to learn really, I think, and interesting stuff. But if you can get to this South Pole of the moon where you've got this access to water and light, then you have sustainable operations from which you can explore the moon much further. So I think it's a great strategic location. Everybody wants to get there. Everybody wants to get to the best bit. We're not really quite sure what the best bit is yet. It's not been very well explored. So yes, there's this big race. And of course, there will be some geopolitical prowess to being the first to establish an operation. Because then the other thing about this is the sort of the international regulations of it all, not that we've really got any regulations. But we do have some sort of, let's say, a first attempt is what I'm hoping they are. The Artemis Accords, which is what number of countries assigned up to America and initiated them. What bothers me about them is that really it's about everybody's agreed, everybody who signed up, not Russia, not China notably, but those signies have ever agreed that once you've established operations on a part of the moon, there's no other entity, whether it's a country or a company, but no other entity should interfere, that's the actual word, should interfere with those operations. So you clearly need to have something you guys decided to discuss, a safety zone around these operations. How big should that safety zone be? So let's say you get to the this wonderful crater on the south pole of the moon. How, you know, could you make your safety zone all the way around the edge of that crater? I don't know, but we don't have those regulations, and I just want us all to play nicely so that we can cooperate because, you know, we have some sort of mining operation, that would preclude the some radio astronomy, for instance, in that part of the moon. And the other collaboration about making best use of the moon's resources, as well as the earth's resources to get there, generating energy, we could share that energy generation, we could share the water supply, let's say. But none of that seems to be happening at the moment. Well, that's one of the problems with having private space companies involved. So close closely, because if they they're spending billions to try and win the contracts from NASA, SpaceX and Blue Origin, that's the other part of this race, isn't it? It's not just between a geopolitical one, it's between two private space companies. The private ones though, I mean, these two that you mentioned, they're trying to get to the get the lunar landers aren't they? So that's what they're really racing for in the short term. And then of course, that's part of this lunar economy later on. But so I don't think that, I mean, as I understand it, the regulations about how we cooperate internationally will support a lot of the private companies, because then they can be assured of longevity of their investments. So I think it is good for them. But yes, there is this other race you write to get to get this this lander, because at the moment the Orion spacecraft itself can't land on the surface of the moon, so the astronauts are going to have to transfer, like dock onto a lander, transfer into it, and then get to the surface. So Artemis III, that is scheduled for next year. The idea is that they're going to test this the Orion capsule. That's the one made by NASA, and they're going to test docking this with lunar landers made by SpaceX and by Blue Origin. Yes, exactly. So we test this not on the moon or not as far as where it is when we test this much closer to the earth quite rightly, exactly as it should be. And then the next one will be doing it are actually docking on the lunar orbit and getting to the surface of the moon, you're using it to actually land. So these spacecraft are also going to be doing some demonstrations of course with with robotic probes on the surface of the moon, so we'll understand that they can actually do a soft landing because it's dead easy to hard land on the moon. Everybody's proved that you can slam your space craft into the lunar surface relatively easily, but doing it nice and gently so that you don't damage it or the occupants is something a bit different. I want to talk about the other missions coming up in a minute, but the thing you mentioned about the South Pole and the fact that there are points there where there's continuous sunlight, you know, that's what's made it always so attractive and interesting a place to put a base. But now this or this talk of putting nuclear reactors on the moon, why do that if you're going to have solar power, but yet now NASA are saying we're actually going to put nuclear reactors up there in 2028. Well, you're not going to get solar power up there immediately. I think not enough generation, so that's the idea. And then also in order to you want you always want to back up, I suppose that's the other side of it. And if we can't get, if we one part of the world can't get, I say NASA's saying this about the nuclear stuff, so if they can't get to the to where they want on the rim of the crater and get the amount of energy they require, then they've got this anyway. And, you know, nuclear power has been proven in space. It's another part though of this international corporation that we need to understand about sustainability, make sure that we don't contaminate the lunar surface. So we need to operate these, this kind of equipment responsibly. There's so much involved in this and I think this race, I don't want the race to become so intense that we forget that some of these other things are important to get right. And we will only have one chance to get this right. And we need to make sure it is right. Absolutely. This message is sponsored by the UK government. What happens when a self-driving car can't see through the snow? Or mistakes a flooded road for a clear one. Scientists from the UK and Germany are working together to solve exactly that. Teaching autonomous vehicles to handle extreme weather is fascinating research and our new scientist, Colab colleagues have created a short film about it that's well worth your time. Watch it now at newscientist.com/roadview. We're talking a minute about some of the science we might get in the future from the Moon's surface. But what about this mission? I mean, it was primarily to test the, was it to test the life support systems of the capsule and how that went? And there were samples they took, even bone marrow samples from the astronauts on this Artemis II mission, wasn't there? Well, they, I think primarily it was really to test the space craft. But of course, yes, you're including the life support system. So it was, it was both of those. They didn't actually take bone marrow samples on the on the flight. But they took all sorts of sort of biological samples before the flight and blood and dinosaur wetsoliver afterwards. Wet saliva, I think being spit as opposed to dry saliva where you just blocked your togg on a piece of paper, which is what they did in space. But yeah, the, I think the main experiments during the flight were all about radiation. So not just radiation damage to the electronics and the spacecraft, but of course, to the astronauts. There was one particular experiment that, that's always heralded as the first one called avatar, which is about taking samples of the human tissue from the astronauts and putting them on this chip. So it's like sort of a tissue on a chip, which is a, a lovely concept, doesn't it? But look, and then of course, they will be analysed after looking at how the radiation might have affected that particular tissue, because of course, comparing it with the astronauts before and after the flight. So there's lots of interest in that. Partly learnt from International Space Station, of course, when we about understanding how feeling weightless effects are human bodies. But of course, here we've got this interesting addition of the radiation, because of course, where they were so far away from the earth that you're outside of the earth's magnetic fields that normally protects us from a lot of the radiation. And the other thing that I'm particularly interested in actually is the immune system. So we know that spaceflight can cause some problems to some astronauts in terms of immune system damage. So sometimes it seems to almost enhance the immune system so we get more allergies. And sometimes it seems to depress its viruses like shingles can break out again. So there's, but how much of that is just general, maybe lack of sleep or general stress cortisol running through the body. I'm I'm biologists, but so I understand all of these things are very important. But also of course, then how important is the radiation damage going to be? So just looking at the differences between this particular mission, although it's of course very small sample size for astronauts, some very one short mission, but it's at least beginning to get some of that data that we'll be able to work with closely later on. And what about what the astronauts saw, because we also saw some incredible pictures of the far side of the moon. But there was a point made that we get something more from human eyes seeing it than we do from cameras. And like the hues of color and how we can look at different objects or features of the moon surface, can you tell us about that? As I understand it, the so certainly when when the human eye looks at certain objects, so we're not just looking at what we've been trying to look at. Of course, we notice other things. We have our peripheral vision. And our brain tunes out what is standard. And then we notice the differences. So things that that perhaps we might have expected to see. So unlike certain craters and other features that the astronauts were trained to see that cameras would normally have been trained on had they not had human eyes be behind them. The astronauts were saying, you know what, there's a bit of a green hue and that that bit over there looks a bit brownish. And because they could then see that, they could zoom in with their cameras and then get particularly good photographs, especially with all the the new digital stuff that we've got up that old equipment. So yes, so there is an element of that. Of course, we've mapped the far side of the moon. We've had satellites going around the moon and they've taken loads of wonderful photographs. And it's not to discredit that. But it's just this is just this extra bit that I think because you've got humans there, NASA was going to make best use of these human eyes. I don't think you'd send humans to look at the moon just for that. But it's because they were there anyway that they could get these extra bits of information. And of course, one of the things that was I thought was quite quite exciting when they went into this eclipse. So when the sun was on the other side of the moon, They were able to see impacts, meteor impacts, so bright flashes where the beaches were making fresh craters. I mean, you see that quite amazing. In real time, they saw like micro-meteor, it's a hit in the. And that's a scientist, a lunar scientist who I think whooping with joy when they asked to ask, "Yes, I've seen one." And then I think there was a few, a handful literally, but that's four or five, that they actually saw in real time. So that was quite something to be able to see there. I don't know that they actually got photographs of those because of course that's something that would be quite instantaneous, that the human eye would pick up. But it's things like that that, yes, we notice, but the camera's aren't trained on that part. So it's great to be able to get those images and for the NASA scientists to feel it. And I say, "Feel" because you mentioned the emotions at the beginning. It's about also when we talk about human eyes, putting ourselves in that place, isn't it? Imagine us looking with their eyes. And I think that's what brings it all so much closer to us. You mentioned the impact seeing them in real time. And I mean, NASA will be looking at that, thinking we need to factor that in as a threat to when we're down there, especially if you're down there for a long time, if you're making a settlement. So that's one thing. But I mean, will this mission Artemis II really have helped in selecting a landing site? Do you think that's going to be more locked in about stuff, about the crater rim and good places around there? I think NASA's known, obviously, that there's been craters and that these are happening more and more because we pick up photographs of new craters. So we know that that is going on. But yes, it's a risk. And of course, it would have been a risk to Artemis as well, to a point, except because they weren't very close to the moon. But nonetheless, they would have been in the line of fire, some stuff going on up there that would have, big stuff would have been tracked, but you know, smaller stuff we can't. And when it's around the other side of the moon, of course, we don't know what is actually happening there. But yes, what difference has it made? I think in terms of getting to the South Pole, we've known that that's been the location that we wanted to get to this particular mission didn't take, you know, didn't fly over that particular part directly. They were able to see it from a distance because they were so far away, they could see the whole of the moon. So this is again, unlike spacecraft, like the Apollo spacecraft, for instance, that flew closer to the moon, they could only see big chunks of the moon at a time. They couldn't see the whole lunar disk. So that was why one of the reasons why the different information came out of this particular mission that they wouldn't have gotten in other missions flying closer. And I think it's just given them that surety of the spacecraft, the life support systems, and that of course, you know, humans are still quite capable, but we should be surprised about that. We did it 50 years ago. Humans are capable of going around the moon, of going to the moon and returning safely. We just need to make sure that the technology holds that up. So we've got Artemis three next year and then the following year, supposedly we've got Artemis four, which is the one that will bring people to the lunar surface. But between three and four, I read there's going to be dozens of launches to get cargo and rovers to the moon. That seems like loads. I mean, first of all, is it feasible that we're going to have that many launches on that cadence? And then why do we need so much cargo on the moon? So I can't really answer to the volume of stuff. I mean, certainly we need a lot of different equipment on the moon and we need to test the landing capability. This isn't something you do just want. So this is something that they will want to do. Make sure they can do it with a high degree of confidence that they're not going to crash land on the lunar surface that the spacecraft can get them back up to the Orion and then back home to Earth. And then of course, later on, we need to be establishing this base. So it'll be part of a, some of the equipment will be science, just understanding more and more about the moon, which will enable us to get the lunar base in the right place and the equipment that we need. Part of it will be establishing some of those, some equipment that the astronauts will need when they get there and enable them to do more work on the surface of the moon as well. So I think it's all just about building this up. And I like it to the titties at least a long term strategy. This has been apparently well planned out. As undoubtedly the Chinese will have been doing also for a very long time. So it's, it's, it's isn't just a kind of a quickly let's, let's land on the surface and oh, what are we going to do now? Yeah. I think and this is what will make it sustainable. This is what actually makes it exciting because then we are really expanding our presence, if you like, away from the earth's surface and into space and bringing all of that part in sort of, I'll put it sort of the human sphere of life, but it will be much more like that rather than, oh, we've just taken a little suger out there and returned. So yeah, that's, that is what makes it exciting. And of course then, you know, for astronauts, we're thinking about always that, that next place where humans might go. And of course, that is using the moon to get to Mars. Very exciting. Yeah. I mean, if it all goes to plan, I heard people saying going to the moon could become like a long haul flight is today, which would be in a bit of a carbon footprint to get there. But you know, if it could feasibly become like that, if the sort of stages we're seeing mapped out, we could get to that kind of routine use of the moon. It's a nice thought, isn't it? I still, I'm not feeling it's going to be very common place, common place, enough for most people to be able to afford, like even a long distance flight that is relatively expensive still on earth. I'm thinking perhaps it shouldn't be that common as well because of the amount of resource still required to get there. And the moon can't support life on its own. Right. It's not, it's not like just popping over to another part of the world where you can step out of an aircraft and breathe the air and find the water. You know, we have to do that. We have to make technology do it on the moon. So that's going to be much more resourceful in all aspects of that word. So yeah, I can't see it being hugely common, but I can see certainly many more people traveling to the moon, not just as career astronauts, so being an astronaut for all their lives, most of their lives, but doing perhaps carrying out a piece of work that is useful to be done there rather than be done on earth. It might even be people a bit like, you know, your IT crew that, you know, they swam into a room and set everybody's IT up. And then because they're so good at their jobs, they go, "There you go, bye bye, call us if you've got a problem." And by and large, it works really well. So I can see a lot of operations sort of happening like that, that people will go to the moon, set up something that they are specialists in, and then depart. So they don't necessarily have to live long term there, as well as the people that are doing that, you know, that more longer term experimental work and other sustained operations. It's some, it's going to be a place where many different types of jobs can happen. Like, and that opens it up, makes it interesting. Helen, I have to say, next month, made the 18th, it's the 35th anniversary of your space flight. It has a, as a week gone by when someone hasn't asked you about it. It's lovely isn't it? It's so, yeah, it's funny, 35 years ago, I flew into space. If anybody had told me then that now or 35 years later, I would be talking to you, podcast, you know, of course, I'm not talking about my space like we've been talking about something that's just happened, which is just fab. But yes, the fact that that I would have made space such a big part of my life really. And I would say pivot because I was a scientist, I did experiments in space, and then subsequently space flight more generally. And science communication became something I was really interested in. So I suppose we more far lives according to partly opportunities, partly the experiences that we've had and the skills that we've got and our interests. And I've found that actually, the more I think about space, the more interested in it, I become especially now we've got fairly standard operations in low earth orbit. So when I flew 35 years ago, you know, we did not have communications to mission control when we were around the other side of the earth. So very much like Artemis, around the backside of the moon could not speak to the earth. I couldn't speak to mission control when I was around the backside of the Soviet Union. They were my mission control then. The autonomous systems, you know, some of them worked quite well. Some of them didn't work well and some of them didn't exist. The communications generally with the earth. The fact that things were and we survived, it was fine. But really my spacecraft and the mirror space station compared to international space station. It's a bit like comparing, you know, international space stations are four star hotel. The mirror space craft is a family camping trip. It's fine. You survive. But we now can do this. I mean, is that we've had many people flying. It seems that we can we know how to survive and we know how to re-adapt to life on earth and we're doing this frequently and relatively safely. We are ready for the next stage. While we're not in any way stopping operations in low earth or but obviously a lot of experimental work and a lot of actually, I think the next stage in lower thurbit will also be factories. So, you know, actually producing materials, whether it's medicines or actual materials that we're going to then convert into other products on earth. But those kind of things will be manufactured in space and brought back to earth from lower thurbit. So that's perhaps the development of lower thurbit. But yes, the next phase is really, yeah, is lunar operation. So yeah, it's so, we are ready in many ways. Let's just end with a vision for maybe an international future base on the moon. And I just don't know, I really don't know whether it's going to be more of the, you know, Amazon, Bezos and Amazon manufacturing in space and selling stuff back to us. Or, you know, Elon Musk and SpaceX doing stuff up there. Or if there's going to be more of the ISS type cooperation going on, I don't know. Can you give us, we'll give us your vision of what the best option is. There's so many different ways it could go. And we need, we really need people to sign up to a vision where we do cooperate. When we do, we know we can do great things. So, let's look at the ozone layer, you know, we are now turning that around because of continued international collaboration and cooperation over the last two, three decades, more, more, actually, four decades of stopping chlorofuller of carbon, CFCs emissions, which, which destroyed the ozone layer. We continue to, we monitor it from space, actually, which is wonderful. But when some country realizes that some actor within their country is releasing a CFC somehow, then they stamp down on it and it's stopped. We continue to do that when we want to. We can do that. Now, clearly, ozone is a simple matter in many respects, so it's not as easy as talking about lunar operations. But I think it is quite possible, let's say, to generate energy on the moon or possibly elsewhere in space to use it on the moon for everybody that's there to beam it back to Earth. The questions are things like, who should benefit from that? How can we allow countries with still developing economies, emerging economies that can't afford to invest in spaceflight at the moment, particularly lunar spaceflight? How can we allow those countries to come on board with stuff like energy from space? If we can beam that back to Earth by microwaves, then we could all benefit from some clean energy on Earth. Let's not exacerbate the geopolitical differences that we've got, partly based on those countries that use the fossil fuels first. That's just one element of it, but we can also can do that on the moon. It is quite feasible for us to generate energy, to have a water supply that we all use, that we contribute to. Not necessarily everybody does the same, but we have an agreement about who is going to use the resources that we don't over mine certain resources from the moon. That we don't stop somebody else from doing the only operation that could only be possible in a certain part of the moon, but where perhaps this, an operation that the first person wants to do, is quite clearly possible to do in other places. It is this international cooperation, collaboration for the resources, but also I think it's the idea that we'll be able to somehow come together for the benefit of everybody. It's not so naive when we know that we have done it with ozone. When we want to, we can do it. We know that it's going to help the private companies because they will have that confidence about their long-term investment. We just need the right kind of perhaps space law, but also the negotiations first about the ethics and the regulations to be put in place. To ensure that everybody does sign up to those regulations, so the notable absences at the moment are the big players and we need all that to happen. We haven't even mentioned stuff like orbital debris and that around the moon as well as around the earth. We know that that's a really big problem, but we don't have to go to up space around the moon as we have already done around the earth. We need to be able to use the moon and the earth's sort of space around us sustainably. So yes, that's my vision, is that it's not so much a technical vision, but it's more sort of an international agreement, a co-operation vision, but it's quite possible. We just need to be able to have the motivation to get there. I think it's with that, that's what we need to create so that we're not just making a quick land grab and getting what we can before the rest of the moon becomes unusable because somebody else is going to do that anyway. Yeah, and the Artemis mission that we've just seen it has certainly provided some of that motivation, I think. We'll leave it there. Thanks so much for joining us, Helen Sharman, and Happy Anniversary next month. Thank you. Do subscribe, follow the world of the universe and us wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Ron Hooper and we'll see you soon. Bye for now.