>> I get to weigh in
on the designs for geology tools
that will get to be used
on the surface of the moon.
And being able to help
those engineers
design those tools
is really a, like,
a beautiful thing.
[ music ]
As a geologist,
there's a lot of different ways
I help support Artemis.
Uh, one of those ways
is to help with
geology training.
So helping to train
engineers, managers, astronauts
that are going to be the ones
who will be walking
on the surface of the moon.
I'm Angela Garcia,
and I'm an exploration geologist
here at NASA Johnson
Space Center.
These NASA tests that we do
are like dress rehearsals
for when we send humans
back to the moon with Artemis.
Grey float in bag
number 3574.
And so it's really about
empowering them
and teaching them everything
that they need to know
to really be field geologists
on the moon.
It's sending astronauts
that are well-trained
and able to pick up
the best samples
and then can be brought back
to Earth.
So we train in a lot
of remote locations because
we want to be as lunar-like
as possible.
Every location
that we choose to test in
is for a different reason.
So the desert,
because it doesn't have
a lot of vegetation
and there's no vegetation
on the moon.
And so we want to have
bare rocks
and large geologic formations
that we can test in.
And so we want to remove
some of the sense of scale
that people feel.
You really have to rely on
more fundamental kind of
navigational skills.
Iceland is great because
they have a lot of frozen,
icy soils.
And so that's a pretty analogous
thing to what we would expect
to see on the south pole
of the moon.
When you do the end-to-end
mission sim,
there's a lot of lessons
that are learned because
you're-you're forcing everyone
to integrate together.
For the astronauts,
they're responsible for
navigating to all of
your stations.
You're trying to describe
the landscape
and describe the hand samples
and collect the right samples
that meet your science
objectives, um, all while
being able to navigate
to where they are
and how they can safely
go back to the lander.
And so we're really all trying
to learn together how we can
communicate with each other,
uh, and what's the best ways
to enable our science
objectives?
When we went to the moon
in Apollo,
we went to equatorial regions
on the moon.
And so for Artemis,
we'll be going to
the South Pole.
And so all of those samples
are new and diverse to us.
It's really important
to get physical samples
back from the moon,
because scientists here on Earth
can study them and learn
more about the history
of our solar system.
A lot of the rocks
that were formed on the moon
were formed from its initial
formation.
So the rocks that astronauts
would pick up on the moon
are really, really old.
It can help us learn
about Earth's history.
So the Earth is
a really dynamic planet
and that it has plate tectonics.
And things subduct
and things uplift.
Uh, you-- are eroded
and subducted and recycled.
But on the surface of the moon,
the rocks that initially
form there are pretty much
the ones that are still there.
So I grew up on Hawaii.
Hawaii is-is amazing
because it's really remote.
And so when it gets dark--
if you know how to get out
of the light pollution
of the city,
you can look up at the stars
and just be really inspired
about the world around us.
I think I've always been
pretty interested
in the natural world
around me,
like going to swim
in the deep ocean
or going to hike
in the mountains
and going to volcanoes
on Big Island
was always just a part
of my life growing up,
and I knew I wanted to learn
more about why those are there
and Earth processes.
Uh, and so when I first took
a geology course,
GEO 101, day one,
like, mind blown.
It was all fascinating to me.
Um, and then every-- I think
every course that I took
that was related to geology
was like, mineralogy
is a thing?
Like, you can make crystals?
What-- like all of it started
to get really, really exciting.
And so I knew I was on
the right track.
Um, so like
most students in college,
I didn't have a lot of money
and I didn't have a car.
So I started really working
in a lab,
um, at my university
washing, uh lab wear
for the graduate students
in that lab.
Um, but that ended up being
a really awesome opportunity
because I was able to be
immersed in the science
that they were doing
with passionate people.
Really a cool thing
to be a part of.
I actually found out
about internship opportunities
at NASA through, uh,
the undergraduate research,
um, I was doing,
I think advice I'd give myself
would be to have
more confidence.
It's really just--
if you have hard work
and initiative and good vibes,
you can really get pretty far.
And so to really keep that
at the forefront,
um, and to just keep pushing
because I think I was
really hard on myself
when I was-was younger.
And it's okay to not know
exactly what you want to do,
um, but to keep following
things that make you happy.