>>KENNEDY: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do
the other things. Not because they are easy but because they
are hard! >>ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for man...
>>NARRATOR: One of humanity's greatest achievements.
>>ARMSTRONG: One giant leap for mankind. >>NARRATOR: And one of
humanity's greatest scientific tools. >>LECKRONE: The world's
most brilliant astronomers do miracles with this observatory.
>>WISEMAN: Hubble is profoundly significant, I think, for
humanity. >>NARRATOR: You might be surprised to learn that the
Hubble Space Telescope and landing on the moon in 2024 have
a lot to do with each other. In fact, when you think of Hubble,
usually those gorgeous pictures first come to mind. But after
Jim Garvin’s 2005 research using Hubble, what have we learned
about prospecting the moon for locations to establish a human
presence for the 2024 Artemis mission? >>GARVIN: Hubble's one
little piece of that masterpiece we've been working on for 50
years, so that people can use the Moon as a special place, as
Mother Nature's great control experiment next door.
>> "Hubble and Going Forward to the Moon"
>>SAGAN: Space Telescope is, in a way, a little like
Galileo's first telescope. Whereever
Galileo pointed his telescope he made major new discoveries. Look
at the Moon, you find mountains and craters, look at Saturn, you
find rings, look at the Milky Way and you find it is littered
and composed of stars. Every one of these discoveries are things
that people had not known before. I think it's going to be
very similar with the Space Telescope. >>NARRATOR: 340 miles
above the Earth’s surface, Hubble orbits over the
distorting effects of the atmosphere, enabling us to look
deeper into space than any ground based telescope. Hubble
was specially designed to be upgraded while in space. Through
five servicing missions over the years, astronauts have repaired,
restored, and updated Hubble to make it better than ever. The
Hubble Space telescope has taught us a lot about our place
in the universe, but back in 2005. then NASA chief scientist
Jim Garvin decided to focus Hubble’s powerful instruments on
something a little closer to home. >>GARVIN: What if we used
Hubble to do what it's best at? Be a precision photometer in
wavelengths where it's very convenient, the Lunar soils
light up like firecrackers if they're rich in certain
minerals. We know from Apollo samples that some of the Lunar
soils and rocks are literally ore bodies. And so the idea of
using Hubble with this exquisite ultraviolet imaging capability
with the ACS instrument at that point, and then maybe later with
others, to target the Moon came alive. >>NARRATOR: Imagine,
you’re 240,000 miles away from Earth, yeah you’ll be getting
packages from home every once in a while, but you’re going to
need to be self sufficient too. And that’s where Hubble comes
in… >>GARVIN: We realized that some of the Moon rocks might be
resources, and if they found them on Earth we'd be mining
them. So using the eyes of Hubble where it has exquisite
precision and resolution in ways that go beyond our eyes, beyond
normal spacecraft we fly to orbit planets, was an
opportunity to use an astronomical asset, a historical
one, a cathedral to the stars to observe the Moon in a way where
we could test, prospect for these resources in three places.
And we were spectacular beyond success with the capability of
Hubble to see things we couldn't see, at finer scales. Hubble
became a resource prospector to light the way for following
missions, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to fill in the gaps, to
paint the picture of the Moon that we're going to go back to.
We were attempting to be catalysts, pathfinders, for how
we might use the Moon in ways that are more creative than many
had ever thought it could be used. What if we could live off
the Moon's resources in ways that enable us not to have to
bring everything with us? We'll use the Moon as the springboard
in confidence to go onto Mars. >>NARRATOR: But establishing
ourselves on the Moon is just the first part of NASA's goal.
There are some bigger plans in store for the future, and you
can be sure that Hubble is a part of that next journey as
well. >>COLON: I'm very excited about the Artemis mission, but
even beyond that the whole idea is to go to Mars. So this whole
process is about making sure we can get back to the Moon safely,
and extending that to be able to journey to other planets, like
Mars, in the future. And Hubble gets to study these objects in
the solar system, including Mars, it studies weather on Mars
regularly and being able to monitor at great levels of
detail these storms helps us better understand the surface of
Mars and where it's safe to land for example, for humans to
visit. So Hubble's really been able to help be a part of this
journey as humans get to go from the Moon to Mars in that sense.
>>CEPI: It's about newness, it's about challenge, it's about
going out there in the forefront of technology and breaking
through. And Hubble represents that to the greatest degree I
can think of. Because it allows us to do it in a big way and in
a small way. It allows us to do it in detectors, it allows us to
do it in computer technology, and optical fabrication, and
optical polishing. But it also gives us this big picture, it
gives us this great challenge of making things better. >>WISEMAN:
People everywhere look up at the same sky and say 'we're all part
of something together, we're all citizens of planet Earth, and
we're all part of this magnificent Universe.' And
having some kind of constructive presence around the Moon, I
think it will be very exciting for people around the globe. So
we are excited about that, and we're excited about the way
science missions, and satellites, and probes, and
telescopes can compliment human spaceflight to give us a full
suite of information, whether it's trying to understand how
humans can survive off planet Earth, or whether it's just
basic curiosity about how did the Earth and the Moon form, and
how does that compare to planets outside our solar system? All of
these information gathering missions are very helpful to our
understanding of who we are as human beings, and to our quest
for exploring space. >>GARVIN: One object that's in our destiny
is the Moon. We've been there, six times, 50 years ahead of our
time with project Apollo. We're ready to go back, women and men,
for the long haul. And that prime directive will put people
on the Moon again in the year 2024. Hubble has been one of
those pieces of the mosaic of information to help us
understand what the Moon offers, what we could use the Moon for
as we're there. So now we could see our Universe, our solar
system in a new light, and now we're ready to capitalize on
that. And that's what Artemis, what Hubble, what the future of
space exploration is about. Let's capitalize on what we've
learned. We're out of the dark ages, we're coming into the new
light, let's go!
[INSPIRING MUSIC]
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