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[Music] Four astronauts just completed an historic mission around the Moon. They did land there yet, but there are plans to get back on the lunar surface in 2028. That's the new Artemis plan, a plan that has been rethought, revised, validated and is now underway with an accelerated plan to get human beings back on the surface of the Moon by the year 2028. Do I believe that it's possible? Absolutely yes. Are there obstacles ahead? Oh yeah. But they insert mountable obstacles. Well, I don't think so, actually. I think we've got a good plan, and I'd like to talk with you about that today on this podcast. Hello astronomy and space fans. You have landed at Translunar, the podcast from the Volksteinvata Minkin. We inform you about current astronomy topics and dive deeper in specific themes. My name is Paul Salazar and I am an amateur astronomer and member of the Volksteinvata, and I'm glad that you were joining me today to take a fresh new look with optimism and with hope into what should become our next foray into space where humans don't just go back to the Moon for a visit, but they go there to begin a long term plan to stay. And that program is called Artemis. Artemis is something that's been talked about recently, quite a lot in the news because there was actually a quite successful journey out to the Moon around it and back to Earth. All went very successfully. All were very impressed. It was a fantastic mission and it's really rekindled the flame. It's revitalized this spirit of adventure, this idea that we humans can and should travel into space and explore deeper. So in this podcast, let's just take a few minutes to recap what just happened with Artemis 2 and then to go deeper into the roadmap ahead for Artemis 3, 4, and 5. So here's how I see it. Artemis 2 was a test mission. A test mission from sponsored by NASA developed and staffed by a very international crew, international partners, many different companies, private and public, collaborating together to build various components that had to work together flawlessly. And starting on April 1st as the countdown reached zero, everything did work flawlessly. I am massive rocket, the space launch system, SLS, took its second flight into space. After Artemis 1's successful travel a few years ago, Artemis 2 was the first time we put human beings on top of an SLS rocket and launched it into Earth's orbit. But it worked flawlessly. Then we put a crew into orbit around Earth into a very special orbit, a very high Earth orbit, to give them a unique trajectory to go to the moon. But we spent a full day in that Earth orbit because we were testing out various systems. It wasn't intended to land on the moon, but it was intended to be a very thorough and complete evaluation of all of the different systems that it will take to get to the moon in 2028. For example, we had to test out the Orion Space Capsule, which is the piece that separates from the SLS and it's where the crew lives for a 10-day mission in this case and where they had to validate that all the systems were working as expected. They had to also validate the propulsion systems, the ability to run electrical systems, to use their computer systems, to use their guidance systems. All of these things had been tested only once before in space. That was with the Artemis I mission, which was not a crewed mission. There were no human beings on that one. Just robotic control over the SLS rocket and the Orion spacecraft. And everything went well in Artemis I, but Artemis 2, when you put human beings inside of a crew capsule, that changes everything. There's a number of ways things can and do go wrong. There were little things like the temperature wasn't quite right. It was a bit too cold after the first day or two, as the crew was complaining very gently on all other communications. They had crashes in software. Guess what? Software will crash in space, just like it does here on Earth. A couple of their note pads weren't working correctly due to some sort of Microsoft Outlook glitch. But those are all things that were not crises and you couldn't work around them. There was a minor crisis, I guess you could call it, which was the fact that the toilet wasn't working correctly due to. Well, due to the challenge you have anytime in space, liquids are very challenging because you have a space capsule where on the outside it's exceedingly cold. Very, very cold. It's the depths of space where the temperature is so far below zero you can't even fathom. And inside you have a crew living at a comfortable 20 degrees centigrade, 68 degrees Fahrenheit. And how you move liquids from inside that warm space to outside into the bitter cold, do all that became a bit of a challenge, an Artemis II. But in the big picture, that can be managed, that can be sorted. The trip itself then afforded the crew once they were on their way to the moon. A really remarkable chance to look at our moon from a new perspective because this orbit around the moon was going to take them a good distance farther away as they circled the back side of the moon than any of the Apollo missions. So no humans had ever seen the moon from this vantage point. And the NASA organization and the space science team made a very, very large priority of ensuring that these four astronauts during their many years of training became junior geologists, let's call it, where they were able to understand and identify from above many, many geological features on the moon. They trained and drilled on this for days and weeks and months and during the several hours in which they were at their closest approach to the moon, flying around the back side, which was partially lit by the Sun, partially not. They really focused in on visual observations. Obviously took a lot of photographs too. And also you just recorded their their sentiments about what was going on. And I'll tell you as a long-time space fan and astronomy fan, they were great. This crew of three men and one woman, three Americans and one Canadian, they were just full of life, of enthusiasm. They were positive the whole way through. They made great scientific commentary about the moon and just about the whole journey as they were traveling. And because of modern technology we have compared to let's say the Apollo era in the 60s. Now we can watch with video feeds that are at real time or near real time. We can watch them making their discoveries and be right there with them in the space capsule and be downloading images hours later of these remarkable things that they saw, not just on the surface of the moon, but they also had a fantastic eclipse of the Sun, where they were able to see very unique views of the solar corona. And of course of all of our planets in the solar system lined up around the side of the moon. Very impressive view that they had. And in addition they were able to see a new type of view of the earth. There is an iconic extremely classic picture from the Apollo 8 mission in 1968, December of 1968, as they came around the moon and they made a photograph of what was now called the Earth Rise, the Earth Rising above the surface of the moon and it's such a powerful picture, such a wildly amazing vivid visual of our place in the universe that they repeated that. Well naturally if you're going around the far side of the moon you're going to have a view back to earth and at some point earth gets blocked and then a short while later it comes back again and they actually quite nicely captured earth set this time, not Earth Rise but Earth Set of a gorgeous crescent earth. So these are all things that you can find on the NASA website. NASA is quite remarkable in terms of its marketing and it does a great job, I think, of turning everything into a bit of a video show, a place where you can go and watch live videos and playbacks and videos and interviews with the crew and new pictures from space and everything is on nasa.gov, nasa.gov. And if you are at all interested in looking at how this thing went, go to nasa.gov and just start browsing their image calories, it's incredible. There is such a rich collection of new images of new ways of looking at the moon, at the earth, that our entire system, I highly recommend it. And then after four days out, going around the moon, four days back to earth, the very successful landing off the coast of California and our four astronauts are back safely. With the trove of information, of stories to tell, of experiences, and most importantly, with the thorough check out of all of the equipment needed to get us back to the moon. But there is a new plan, there is a new Artemis timeline that was announced around just not far not long before the launch of Artemis 2. There is a new administrator at nasa, Gerrard Isaacman. And I'll be the first to admit, I find that they have to be very, very thoughtful and very focused and quite skilled at rethinking the challenge of how do we get to the moon. The Artemis program up until a month ago has been plagued with delays and overruns and constant pushing out of the project and the program. And up until just a month and a half ago, the plan had been that Artemis 3 would be our first landing on the moon. And to some extent, to some, to a little bit of a dismay, they scrapped that and said, we're going to change the plan for Artemis 3. Instead we're going to go up to earth orbit and we're going to practice docking and undocking with our lunar landers. And when you think about it, at first it felt like, oh, well that's too bad, we're not going straight to the moon. But on the other hand, in this approach, this fairly conservative yet rigorous and speedy approach to get us back to the moon, you've got to thoroughly test systems like docking and undocking from two different spacecraft because there's not just one lunar lander, there's two. There's one coming from SpaceX, another from Blue Origin. And nasa needs to know that we can dock and undock with both of these landers. But there's much more extensive testing to be able to do to verify that all of our systems are going to be working successfully. So nasa has rescheduled things. However, there was yet another element to this that Jared Isaacman pointed out over the last several months. And that's that nasa had just become a bit too slow at launches. That back in the Apollo era, there were times when we were launching Apollo rockets, the Saturn V rocket every three to four months, just to get us closer and closer with more and more test missions before actually landing on Apollo 11. Well, on this era of Artemis, he and the rest of the NASA organization and all of its contractors and subcontractors have all agreed we've got to pick up the pace and start doing this more quickly. Which in fact is how they're now planning to do this. To turn around and get back to the launch pad, not three years from now or four years from now has has been the case in the Artemis program so far. But in one year or in ten months or in eight months to build that muscle memory, to build that repetition, that ability to move a little bit more speedily into the next phase and the next phase of testing out our systems and getting ourselves back to the moon. Now nobody wants to rush this and do anything hasty, but in a way, by transforming Artemis 3 from a lunar landing to just a test of docking of the vehicles, well, that is a good step. Now that I think about it. And it's a good way to conservatively validate equipment and do more testing with the plan that a year later, that means now 2028, then we're ready to send the lunar landers out an orbit around the moon, to send another SLS with passengers aboard the Orion capsule in Artemis 4 and 5, to send them on the way to their moon and on moon orbit dock with the lunar lander, travel down to the surface of the moon, explore, and then travel back up to the Orion capsule and return home. So as you can see, if you think about all of these steps, we've just finished an Artemis 1 mission, fully robotic, but did the first basic testing of SLS and Orion. We've just had over the last few weeks Artemis 2, which it took us out to the moon with human beings, with passengers aboard and validated the systems, once again in the SLS to get us into orbit. But now the Orion capsule to get us over to the moon. You do that another time in the Artemis 3 with the landers and by Artemis 4, you've put the pieces together in different configurations and that should be about the right time to go and land. Don't you think? I think it's a good plan. I think it's thoughtful. I think it's structured in a way that provides on the one hand proper testing and validation of systems and on the other hand, the sense of speed and urgency to move more quickly, to build the muscle memory, to get into a rhythm and to turn the business of going into space with humans on board. Turn that into a much more predictable and reliable process that can be repeated on a more frequent basis. We humans have become quite skilled at sending lots of things into space. So since the last time we sent humans into space until now, yes it was 52 years from moon landing to the new moon missions. Yes it's been at least 15 or so years since the space shuttle was sending people into space into low Earth orbit. We have people on board the space station so we know how to do the basics. We've been doing it reliably with robotics spacecraft for a lot of years but now we've got all the pieces woven together. And in my opinion, we're on a good track. We're on a good course now. And I have high hopes and a renewed sense of optimism that in fact the plans put forth by the new NASA administrator and the validation that we just saw on that last Artemis 2 mission are in fact some of the most important proof points to know that we're going to get there within a reasonable time period that is to say within about two years. It all makes sense to me now. And one more thing just to close out. If you were not inspired by the images, by the stories, by the videos of our nice crew that just went around the moon, I don't know what will inspire you. I find this way in which they conducted that mission, the attitude, the ideas, the enthusiasm coming from our crew was fantastic. It was just a great trip. They made it so personable. But there's another side to that as well. Back to the NASA website and the NASA approach to doing this. Everything is broadcast. Everything is disclosed. Everything is very transparent. Everything, every single day of the mission they had press conferences. Now I don't know if you ever watched a press conference or not. Believe me, I don't do this all the time. But for a NASA moon mission I do. And everything's on the NASA YouTube channel. And the daily press conferences themselves were for me a source of inspiration to see the men and the women, the leaders, the scientists, the technical experts that have all come together for many different disciplines to turn this into such a robust mission. Even if it's just a test mission, it was extraordinary, it was successful, it brought us, of course, lots of data and validation, but it also brought that human side across. And even these press conferences, if you were to watch a few of those, also give you that human side, that all of this happens because we human beings apply ourselves with dedication and commitment to ideas over a period of years just to achieve the next big step in space. Well, I hope you can take a few minutes and you're inspired to look at the pictures, look at the images, look at the stories, listen to the videos, get caught up on this and get swept up. It's not every day we travel around the moon. I personally loved it. It was the most exciting 10 days of recent memory for me. And I hope that you too can find some inspiration and some ideas in the Artemis plan, the new plan, and the possibility of us setting foot again on the moon in 2028. For the Translator Podcast and for the folks who are invited to mention, my name is Paul Salazar. Thanks for listening.