Welcome to NASA's science life.
This is your chance to interact with NASA experts
and have your questions answered in real time.
I'm your host to Tahira Allen on today's episode.
We're exploring NASA's historic endeavor
to partner with American companies
to deliver science and technology to the moon.
Did the Commercial Lunar
Payload Service Initiative, also known as CLPS.
Now, on February 22nd, Intuitive Machines Odysseus
Lander touched down on the Lunar South Pole region,
delivering NASA's science and technology to the surface.
Odysseus continued to operate on the moon,
collecting important data, taking photos and deploying
nascent instruments in advance of upcoming human missions
to this same region.
Let's get a better understanding of this new way
to deliver science and technology to the moon.
Our moon,
It seems so close in the night sky.
But getting there is really hard.
But what if there was a way to change that?
Only a few nations have successfully landed on the moon
as NASA's send astronauts back to the lunar surface.
This time to stay,
we will need to send science and technology instruments
ahead of time to lay the foundation for
human exploration, to make this happen.
NASA is helping establish a commercial lunar economy
for the first time ever.
There will be commercial delivery services to the moon.
We are enabling American companies
to send our payloads to the lunar surface for us.
These delivery services will expand our capabilities
for exploration radically, increasing the amount of science
we can achieve.
This high risk, high reward initiative will invest in
and leverage the entrepreneurial spirit of American innovation
to launch a commercial lunar marketplace.
Advancing technology and exploration for all of us.
With this never before seen streamlined access to the moon,
we will be able
to make novel measurements and develop technologies
that scientists have long wanted to do on the lunar surface.
And as this new industry matures,
this commercial delivery service for NASA and other customers
could expand beyond the moon
to other destinations in our solar system.
And we can learn to live on another world
because we are explorers.
As you can see,
all of this is in an effort to conduct science
test technologies and demonstrate capabilities
to help NASA's explore many regions of the moon
multiple times a year as we prepare for Artemus.
Let's jump in to discuss what we've learned from the science
that operated on the moon over this past week.
Now, as a reminder,
if you have questions throughout today's show,
you can send them in using the hashtag.
Ask NASA on social media or by dropping your questions
directly into the comment stream wherever you're watching.
Today, we are joined by two very special guests
who are going to be answering those questions live on air.
We have Dr.
Sue Lederer,
who is the project scientist for CLPS here at NASA.
Welcome, Sue.
Very happy to be here with you.
And we have Debra Needham, who is a program scientist
for the agency's Science Mission Directorate.
Hey, Debra.
Hi Tahira. Great to be here today.
And thank you so much for being here with us.
Now to kick things off.
Titles at NASA can be a bit technical.
Could you both go into a little bit of detail
about your individual roles on the CLPS initiative?
Sue, why don't we start with you?
Absolutely.
As the CLPS project scientist for this mission,
I've been working with our payload teams
planning for operations
during the years leading up to the mission
and ultimately for the past two weeks.
I sat on
console in the background at IMS Mission Control
to help orchestrate our payload teams,
both in transit to the moon
as well as on the surface of the moon.
And so throughout this time, I worked alongside a full NASA
ops team, as well as with our payload teams.
It's an exciting time.
I can't wait to hear more about that, too.
Later on in the show.
Deborah, what about you?
Yeah, I think so.
I'm kind of on the more programmatic side,
so I helped create the opportunities
for the instrument teams to propose and execute
the amazing science investigations
across the CLPS program.
And I also worked with the selected science teams
and technology
teams to establish what it means for their investigations
to be successful during this mission.
Well, this is really great.
I mean, it is such an exciting time in space exploration.
You know, over these past few weeks with the U.S.
is first soft landing on the moon in over 50 years.
Now we have six massive payloads on the lunar surface
thanks to Odysseus's Intuitive machines, Odysseus Lander.
So could you give us a quick summary of these
six NASA experiments?
Absolutely.
So we have sort of this common theme amongst the six payloads,
the nature payloads on I am one testing technologies
that will help pave the way for how to navigate to and land
safely as well as autonomously on the lunar surface.
They've also allowed us
to investigate the environment that the NASA
autonomous astronaut astronauts will experience
and to help to develop technology that we need to live
and work safely on the surface of the moon.
And so would you mind to I understand there's
six payloads that were delivered to the surface of the moon.
Could you give us a quick,
just high level summary of what each of those six were?
Absolutely.
So first, the payloads are all on board.
The I am one lunar lander
that's formally called Odysseus, but we like to call him Odie.
So onward includes a number of different NASA instruments.
The first is the navigation Doppler lighter.
It use lasers to help measure how fast
and how close to the lander was or how close the lander
was to the surface of the moon as it landed.
The I Am one Lander's navigation system
was also designed to use some of the data
generated by this instrument during its descent and landing.
In addition to using another suite
of navigation instruments that were installed by
intuitive machines,
the laser retroreflector array can reflect light
emitted by an incoming
orbiting spacecraft right back at the spacecraft to give future
spacecraft a reference point on the lunar surface.
L arrays are also installed on other landers
already on the moon, and will be put on
future landers with other inadequate payloads.
Next is the radio frequency mass gauge.
This measure propellants and fuel in the tank
throughout the mission
from fueling the tanks before launch, throughout
transmitting to the moon under microgravity conditions
as well as during and after landing.
Next is stereo cameras for lunar surface
studies, whose goal was to image the engine exhaust
plume as it churned up the dust on the lunar surface.
It's the secondary goal was to image the exposed fresh
surface below the lander
throughout the lunar day for science investigation and
wasn't able to collect data on descent this time.
But we were able to test it in space as well as after landing
to help prepare for its next mission,
which will be on Firefly's Blue Ghost Lander coming up later
this year.
The next payload is called Radio Wave Observations
at the lunar surface of the photo electron sheet.
It's a payload that conducted radio astronomy, both in transit
to the moon as well as from the surface by detecting radio
waves emitted by the currently radio quiet sun at baseline.
How radio noisy
the earth is from the lunar surface,
both at high frequencies and low.
It took data designed to measure dust impacts to help us better
prepare for the environment for future organisms, missions
that will be exposed to this dust.
And finally, lunar Node one tested technologies
that act like a lighthouse that guides a ship,
but instead using radio waves that can help guide spaceships.
Serving as a beacon for autonomous navigation.
Kind of like how we use GPS on the Earth and the team.
One team didn't know it when we launched,
but they played a big role in helping the I Am one lander
to navigate from the earth to the moon.
So that's our set of six massive payloads carried to the moon
by I'm one mission.
And a lander we call LTE.
Wow. And I
mean just such cool, innovative technology.
And so I understand, you know, we've we've landed on the moon.
The science is operational.
We're receiving data back from it.
Deborah, what happens next?
Yeah, that's a great question.
So, I mean, for intuitive machines for this delivery on
the payload, teams will continue to analyze
the data that they brought back and also archive the data
that that can be archived so that other science
and technology teams can use that data
for their own projects and to better understand
the environment of the lunar surface.
Going forward.
But for Clint, this is just the one of the first deliveries
demonstrating the concept
for the commercial in their payload services.
This is the second attempt and the first successful attempt
to land on this on the surface of the moon.
And for these initial CLPS missions,
that is exactly what we were looking for,
is establishing this as a capability for the agency
and really for the world to take advantage of,
to get better, more frequent and more affordable
access to the lunar surface.
So going forward, we actually had six more
deliveries that NASA has contracted
with American companies and to more even just this year.
It's an incredible,
incredibly busy time for us for lunar science.
But for
two more later this year and then for more going forward
and to deliver NASA's science payloads to the lunar surface.
So very excited about all the science opportunities
that are coming up. But
yeah, absolutely.
And that this is just the beginning.
And so I want to stick
on this topic of CLPS that kind of zoom out a little bit.
Deborah, could you help put into context how CLPS
is beneficial to NASA's Artemis campaign and building
this sustained presence on the moon?
Yeah, absolutely.
There are a couple different
different answer to that question.
Let's say parts of the answers and some one is NASA
and science in general has many outstanding science
questions about the moon and where did them come from?
When did it form?
How did it change over time?
How does the activity on the lunar surface changed over time
on the required global access across the lunar surface?
So CLPS offers that opportunity.
And those those science objectives are fed
into the Artemis
as the into into NASA's moon to Mars campaign.
And so looking at the moon to learn more about the moon,
but also our place in the solar system.
So going forward on to Mars as well.
But for Artemis in particular,
establishing this capability of access
and delivery to the lunar
surface has the potential to enable us to deliver
on science instruments
or tools that the art of mass astronauts can use
and deploy in the future during Artemis this mission.
So it can be a direct
link between CLPS and Artemus and enabling
and enhancing Artemis exploration going forward.
This is so cool to think about, right?
The future of human exploration, lunar science.
And so we have a lot of great questions coming in online
from our viewers.
So let's just jump right into this Q&A
as a reminder for those watching live.
You can submit your questions for Deborah and Sue
by using the hashtag Ask NASA on social media
or by dropping your question
directly into the comment stream wherever you're watching.
All right.
So our first question today is from
the scientific potato on YouTube.
Who asks, Do you believe that this technology
will help us possibly get humans to Mars one day?
Sue, I need to take this one.
I absolutely believe that the technology
that we're using for clear can apply to Mars.
And in fact,
we're having those discussions right now about how
that potential can be used for the future.
As we noted earlier, there's a lot of technologies
that we are just
designing and developing and testing right now for clips
that allow us to land safely on a planetary surface.
And because they allowed us to land on the moon,
it also is technology that can be used for landing
safely on Mars as well.
And Deborah, I know you're involved, too,
in kind of the choosing of these science instruments.
Is that something that you all that the agency keeps in mind
when determining which instrument makes it on a
on a lander?
Yeah, that's a that's a great question.
So for for the moon, we do have there are
there are fundamental questions that can only be addressed
on the lunar surface, for example,
until the moon surface preserves the most ancient
times of the solar system history.
Whereas Earth, for example, and Mars to to an extent,
has experienced thrust resurfacing on when water
even running water early on Mars, history
has reshaped the surface of the Mars
does have ancient terrains look to the moon
as the cornerstone for understanding the
the timing and the earliest environment of
the solar system environment
during which planets generally were were forming from there.
From there, the primordial soup of of
in the dawn.
So we do look to the moon in particular
or for learning about
we have specific science objectives
at the moon
that we're addressing with many of these investigations.
But there are capability flights
exactly like
since that there are capabilities
not only landing at the center acknowledges,
but also scientific instruments and the technology associated
with those that can be applied to Mars as well.
And so so I have a great question for you.
We have Piers really, really on X, who asks,
does NASA's see itself working with intuitive machines
well into the future?
I can tell you that we already
have two additional task orders.
That's what we call them at NASA.
But there's two more missions that Intuitive Machines
is working on with us already in play.
So we have I am two, and that will take both a drill
as well as a science instrument called a mass spectrometer.
The concept is that it actually sniffs the volatiles like water
and methane and things that can easily
evaporate it and tries to figure out whether or not
we have any detection of water on the surface of the moon.
We certainly have evidence that water exists there.
And so
we're bringing instruments to detect water
to a number of different locations in the South Pole
and into this mission
is going to be one of the first that will allow us to do that.
And then I am three
is also already contracted with intuitive machines.
They have a suite of what we call PRISM instruments.
That's just one of the programs that NASA has that's designed
to take instruments that aren't just built by NASA,
but there are also built
by other companies and as well as academia.
So there's a number of different instruments
that will be taken on the I Am three lander as well.
So we have rovers, we have Hoppers,
we have drills, we have instruments
trying to sniff to figure out what's on the surface.
There's all kinds of additional science,
like Deborah was saying,
that is very specific to the moon and others
that can be applied to other places like Mars for the future.
Okay.
So we have a lot to look forward to.
Deborah.
We have our Arkmel Man Zune on YouTube.
Who wants to know when can we expect this next CLPS launch?
yeah.
Like Sunset is later this year.
We actually have two more on this one slated for fall
and one slated for winter of this year.
We're very much looking forward to getting those off the ground
and onto the lunar surface.
Now, these CLPS, launches, as you all had mentioned
earlier, are really laying the groundwork for future
human missions to this exact same region.
We have a question from Heidi Williams on YouTube.
Who wants to know when will humans go back to the moon? Sue?
gosh, that's a very good question.
And the Artemis program
is designed to bring us with humans back to the moon.
And I actually think Deborah is probably
the better person to answer what the
the current estimate is for when Artemis this is expected to
both orbit the Earth kind of like Apollo
eight did, as well as to land on the surface.
Yeah.
So the next Artemis States are currently slated
for late 2025 to orbit and 2026 to land.
So that's
that's the plan right now that we're pushing forward
to get get humans back to the surface of the moon.
We're so excited to get to get really
having humans explore the surface is so important.
Humans have obviously cognitive capability.
They can think in real time, make decisions
for how they're going to select which samples.
Put that in context with the surrounding materials
and help us learn so much more
in such a much shorter period of time
that we can't wait to get them back to the surface.
And Endeavor Endeavor really is
good.
Why is this lunar South Pole region of such interest to NASA?
Yeah.
So as you said, we have detailed data
that we have taken from orbiting scientific instruments
that point to the potential
for water resources in the south polar region.
And those resources
are important for enabling a sustained human presence,
for exploration on the lunar surface,
but also pushing forward to exploring Mars.
And so as you're seeing on the screens, those blue areas
are where we pinpointed from orbital measurements, where
there's hydrogen and hydroxyl materials on the surface.
And we have to learn what how it powers those.
How are those materials on the surface?
Are they on top?
On the very surface, or we just scrape them up?
Or do we have to drill down into the subsurface?
Are they blocks of ice or are they just
part of the mineral grains and parts of the rocks themselves
that we have to really work to get them extracted and
so that we could process them and use them for exploration?
And so a lot of the missions that we're planning,
like the iron to analysis, are helping us understand
how those volatiles, those materials are situated
in the surface
and figure out how we can use those to help sustain essence.
And but those materials are in really
challenging places to get to, and they're locations
that are permanently shadowed from are from the sun.
So, so the sun never actually directly lights up those areas.
And those areas are really hard to explore.
I mean, the equipment that we usually bring require
sunlight to power it.
And so the great thing about the South
polar region is that those areas of permanently shadowed
regions are really close to areas
that have prolonged illumination,
and they're higher high in elevation so that the sun
can contact not constantly, but for a long period.
That's where the sun illuminates
that surface, enabling us to power
the equipment we need to access the promotion of these.
And so I want to actually take us back now
to the science and technology
that was delivered to the lunar surface.
We have SKD actually, we have Alexandra
552 on YouTube.
Who asks, What information were you most excited
to obtain from the recent I Am mission?
Sue Sounds like a good one for you.
You know, it's funny, we have six NASA instruments
and I've been asked before, which is my favorite instrument,
and to have a favorite instrument
is kind of like to have a favorite child.
You love them all, but you just love them differently.
So for us, it's been exciting that we can do radio astronomy
for the first time,
both in transit as well as on the lunar surface.
It's exciting that we can use the land on the lunar node.
One to help us really learn how to navigate to the moon
and how to understand how to communicate back with the earth.
Neil This navigation Doppler lighter is so well-suited
to use a laser technology
that allows us to really pinpoint
how high up and how fast we're going.
And so that's, that's been really fun.
Gotten a lot of really good information
back from that payload as well.
And these are laser retro reflectors
that can just kind of fit in the palm of your hand.
They're they're cute little instruments,
but they're really powerful to allow us
to create this network of data
that we can really create this
the pinpoint of
where the landers are after they're on the surface,
and then scouts near and dear to all of our hearts.
They have these stereo
camera images that they're designed to take
and we're really looking forward to the ghost lander.
That's later this year.
Firefly is launching because we also have a scout that's on
Sorry and I forget that that's full of name
unknowns, but using your full name.
But it's basically taking stereo camera images
and that should be
really exciting for us to do some additional weird science
from the surface.
So it's for me, it's very hard to choose a favorite.
And in fact, with all of this, they're
doing a little bit of science.
We we have some things that are purely tech
demonstration, like the radio frequency mask age, where,
I mean, when you're in a car
and you have the fuel
that's being pulled down, you can figure out how much cash
you've got left.
If you're in microgravity and all floats around,
how do you figure
out how much fuel and propellant you have left?
So we have to figure out a different way to do that.
And the radio frequency mass gauge allows us to do that.
So they're all my favorites
in different ways because they're all doing
technology and science and a little bit of a different way.
So yeah, it's hard to say what the favorite is.
They're all favorites.
Well, I actually have a great follow up to that.
We have SKD on YouTube who asks,
Do you think that this technology
is going to allow us to space travel for a longer time
now with more efficient energy power?
Yeah, I think that definitely it will.
We have these, like, for instance,
our lunar node, one that allows us to communicate back
and forth between the spacecraft and the earth.
It allows us to do a better job at estimating what its orbit is
and what its trajectory
from the Earth to wherever we're going will be.
So that's a really good one.
And then again, this radio frequency mass gauge,
how is it that you know how much fuel you have left
if you don't know that, how do you know how to really know
if you can have a longer burn or a shorter burn?
How is it that you're going to use your spacecraft
to be able to navigate to the next place out?
So we definitely have some capability for the longer term.
Just the initial early stages of that.
But but we're on our way there.
And so thinking about this
longer term, right, we have Edward Wong on YouTube
who wants to know, will NASA ever build a moon base?
Deborah, I'm going to take that one.
Yeah, absolutely.
That's that's the plan that's with us is one
interpretation of what
a sustained human presence on the lunar surface means.
And so NASA is actively planning
what does a base lunar base look like.
But that's what the Artemis program is.
Or the Artemis, this initiative is is aiming to do
is to accomplish that.
And so we have still me on YouTube.
Who wants to know why go back to the moon?
Deborah Yeah, that's a great question.
So if you think of of lunar exploration
as we think about it on earth, if you went to the Sahara Desert
and that was the only place you went to on Earth,
you would not know everything about how diverse
the environments are on Earth
and how the vast majority like the vast level of life that
permeates from the bottom of the ocean
to the tops of mountains and everything in between.
So going someplace new on the lunar surface is is critical
for our understanding of of the vast
diversity of lunar geology and our history as well.
The Apollo missions went to different, different areas.
They definitely explored very different areas
that they were actually pretty concentrated
on the Lunar New Year site near the equator
and going to the south polar
region of the moon offers us an opportunity
to explore a very different region,
very different environment.
And that's part of what
this intuitive machine's
mission was, helping us understand
what the surface environment is like in a more polar location,
and then how you will be with when the earth
is so low on the horizon like it is in the South Pole region.
That introduces really complex
conditions for how you communicate back home.
So there are unique challenges, but there are also unique
opportunities to investigating the exploration.
And then we also look to
the future in some future missions
that we have already on the books.
To go to the lunar side,
there's a very different environment on the north
side as well
that can give us insight into when the moon formed our form
and what its internal structure is like.
So lots of opportunities coming up.
Yeah, and it sounds like lots of data coming up.
And so we have Chandra on X, who wants to know,
will any of this data that's collected from
the payloads be available to the public too?
And absolutely will when NASA's builds instruments
that go to various different places in the solar system.
The goal is always to make sure
that that data becomes publicly available.
So there's a place that's called the Planetary Data System.
It's PBS for short, and this is where we take
all of the science data and we archive it so that
everybody can have access to that data in the future.
So it's very exciting for us
that we have a way to share this data outside of NASA
with the rest of the public,
with the other scientists that are out there,
not just in the U.S. but abroad as well.
That is great to know.
And so my next question, Sue or Debora,
one of you I'll jump in, but this is a question
that we're getting a lot from folks online.
A lot of people seem concerned.
So I'm going to ask, it is from low consciousness on
X, who says, first of all, huge congrats
on this great accomplishment and that this time O.T.
seems to have tilted a bit on landing.
And what are your thoughts on that?
So and he also they also follow up to say,
am I correct in understanding
that it did not have a negative impact on the mission?
So I can start with that and then I'll let Deborah jump in.
So it was really, for me, incredibly interesting
to be part of the entire mission, to be in their mission
control area throughout from launch
to landing and all the way until the very last moment that Odie
was sending data back.
So when you have a mission where it doesn't land
completely upright, but it has a little bit of a tilt,
it absolutely has an effect on how you communicate back.
The thing to me that was really incredible was watching
all of the people,
all of the camaraderie, all of the collaboration that
we had, that their team had, and how hard everybody worked
to ensure that instead of having it being over
and then having that big mission
and instead we were able to operate
all of our active payloads from this lunar surface.
We have evidence now that even the
laser retroreflector
that's on the surface will be able to be seen
from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter called LRO.
That's the spacecraft in orbit.
So watching this all happening.
The thing to remember, it's really important.
It's so hard to communicate
this is a fairly complex machine.
It's the first time that it's ever, ever flown in space.
There are miles and miles of wire and cables
and things that need to communicate,
engines that have a brand new technology
that's never been tested before.
And so trying to get all of those pieces to work
perfectly for the very, very first time that has ever flown
means that you will allow for no
allowance for things not to go right.
And when you're too afraid that things are going to fail,
it also means
that you don't allow for these incredible successes
to occur, to allow yourself to really face the challenges.
And when you face the challenges, everybody
works together.
And so I saw people,
gosh, they were working so many hours of the day.
We had people sleeping in offices
and laying on the couches
because they didn't want to leave in case
somebody needed to get their help.
So we all pull together as a community.
And there were so many things that they
already would send back some data
and we have to figure out
how to fix it or how to work with the spacecraft to
to really, you know, make some adjustments along the way.
And all the people would get together
and figure to come back and say, we have a solution,
and then something else would come back and we'd say,
we have to think about that.
And we'd all come together and come up with another solution.
And so the way to
really innovate and make sure that something
succeeds is to allow for those challenges to happen
and then really come together to work through them as a team.
The IAM team work together.
The team worked with NASA's.
So all of us, including the commercial payloads,
did this incredible job where I felt like
every time they came in and said we have something
that we need to work on.
About the fifth or sixth time they came in,
we all looked at each other and smiled and said,
But we know that you know how to fix these things.
You're just going to pull another rabbit out of the hat.
And then the next time they come
in, they say, okay, we have it resolved.
We know what to do.
So by allowing this really complex instrument
to go
through the whole lifecycle of launching for the first time,
transiting to the moon for the first time
and allowing for it to figure out to maybe not land
perfectly, but then to use that new challenge to figure out
how to communicate back to the Earth.
It presented
other kinds of data that we never expected to get back.
So we had, for instance, one of our
rules is has four antennas, and we were supposed to deploy
all of them at the same time
on the surface, one after another on the surface,
while the sun decided that it wanted
to deploy one of those before it even landed on the surface.
But instead of the team
being disappointed, they were excited
because then they were able to collect data.
When we were in transit to the moon, different data
that we didn't expect
and like Deborah was saying, when we got to the surface
because it was
lying on its side, it allowed us to really dig into
how do you communicate
when the sun is so low on the horizon
and the earth is so low on the horizon
that the data is kind of bouncing
around on the surface as it comes back?
Without that, we don't have as much data
to really understand
the challenges as well and to better prepare
for even I am to as well as for our teammates.
So I know it's a very long winded way of saying
that things didn't happen exactly as we anticipated,
but thank goodness for all of the additional data
and knowledge that we gained and really
the team that bonded together in the process of all that.
And what a story of just
perseverance and overcoming like ingenuity to everything.
And so, Deborah, do you have anything to add to that?
Just one thing that I'd add.
Eclipse was always expected
to be a risk tolerance initiative.
The idea is that usually space
travel and exploration has been
pretty much entirely in the hands of governments
and agencies across the world that
those government agencies tend to have a lot more resources
to spend or in this case, private companies.
And when And this one of the amazing feats of this
and one of the accomplishments of the team
since they were the first
entity to land on the surface of the moon,
private company to land on
the surface of the moon on their first try.
That is an incredible feat that I
guess, as you said, it wasn't, you know, straight up and down.
It was on its own, like slightly tilted.
And yes, that had implications for the mission.
But they that and they operated our payloads, all of our power
cables on the surface and beamed data back.
That is an incredible accomplishment.
And they and as you said,
they learn so much about how that spacecraft works
that they're going to
take all of those lessons learned and apply them to Ion to
and they and they're also working with the other companies
that are in the eclipse vendor pool.
The all of the vendors who are eligible for proposing
to these pass holders that sees that these deliveries
to help them with lessons learned and not proprietary
technologies is the new proprietary to the company.
But they're learning lessons that they're sharing
because they understand that
we're establishing a lunar economy.
And the success of one is the success of all.
And so we're applying these lessons learned to the future.
We're going to have other lessons
that we're going to learn, right?
I mean, this is a risk tolerant endeavor.
There will be other other lessons to learn.
But I really think that they learn how that spacecraft works.
And we're really looking forward to intuitive seeing what
what they're with, how they apply their lessons
learned for their own spacecraft.
And we're also looking forward
to fireflies in the delivery later this year
to hear them on
as they learn their own lessons about their own spacecraft.
Yeah, and also to remember that NASA also know
when we were very, very early
on, the first time when we were building Apollo
and learning lessons, we had failures along the way as well.
That helped us better prepare for our future mission, right?
So expecting us to get things perfectly
is like putting a child on a bike and expecting that
that they'll get it
perfectly the first time and it'll never falter on their way.
But allowing that to really
go, really helps us in the long term.
So the fact that they got all the way
to the moon and landed safely, we like we work on the surface
of the moon
for a whole week is really to me just absolutely incredible.
We didn't even do that with our first Apollo mission right.
Our first one,
we just went around and came back
and then we tried landing later where they went all the way
to landing on the surface for their first one.
So it's very touching.
It is exciting.
And so Steve Graves on YouTube wants to know,
with the success of Odysseus, does Nasser expect
to have regular moon missions on, say,
a weekly basis, a monthly basis in the future?
Deborah
That's that's so our plan NASA's
plan is to have two deliveries a year.
Now, obviously, this year we have a kind of a crunch
crunch period where we have four in one year.
But the goal is to have two.
But what I'd say is NASA's goal is we're we don't want to be
the only customer on all these deliveries.
The idea is that as we establish this lunar
economy,
that there will be other other companies, other academic
institutions, other countries that want to take advantage
of this opportunity
and many opportunities to go to the lunar surface.
So really, as many
as the customer base can support
is what the eventual delivery can be
into.
Talking again about
deliveries to the moon, NASA's delivery to the moon.
We have a great question for you, Sue.
It is from Matthew Henson on YouTube who asks,
What is lunar trailblazer and how does it work?
my. So that's a great question.
And it's actually
not an instrument that's on one of my task orders.
So I'm kind of I'm going to hand that one over to Deborah.
I know my own payloads very intimately,
but not as many of the other ones on the other task orders.
Deborah, can you step in?
Yeah.
So lunar Trailblazer is kind of is the next step for
understanding the composition of the lunar surface.
It'll be an orbiting it suite of instruments
that's looking very specifically
for where the water is lunar and fuller from the shelf
regions in the South Pole, but also in the North Pole.
So just kind of global distribution of those
and then it's going to be delivered
on that later this year is the plan to go.
And so it'll be on a delivery to the lunar surface
and will be dropped off in orbit
on while the lander goes to the surface.
But yeah, we're really looking forward to having
those measurements on this, but really high resolution.
So we'll be able to see in fine detail where on the surface
volatile bearing deposits are.
And so it's a great follow up to that.
We have Julian on YouTube who wants to know
if there is water on the moon?
Will it be the same as Earth?
that's a great question.
And the answer to that is yes.
When you have water, right, it's two hydrogen and an oxygen
connected together.
And so water on the earth is the same as water on the moon
or on comets or in fact, on other planetary systems as well.
So this is really one of our drivers
for going to the South Pole.
A lot of people say, well, why are you going to the South Pole?
It's very cold down there.
And and it's hard to communicate.
But what is one of the key elements for life to exist
and everybody who's ever gone to their faucet to fill up
a glass of water knows that in order for life to exist,
we definitely need a resource of water.
So our goal is to build a permanent lunar base
at the South Pole, or at least a lunar base
that exists for a period of time at the South Pole.
Those astronauts that are going there are going to need
a source of water.
And at least
on the International Space Station,
we have ways that we can take water and clean it up
to allow the astronauts to drink and to live
and the more water that you can harvest
from the moon
in from these
permanently shadowed areas that Deborah is talking about,
the less we have to launch from the surface of the earth.
So it saves us all a lot of money as well as mass.
It goes up and down.
All of these things play a role in
trying to make make these decisions.
But water itself is the same everywhere in the universe.
It's a great question. Great question.
If you do you mind if I add to that?
So that's absolutely right.
Like water and it's in this chemical form is
is the same throughout the solar system.
Even Earth's moon and comets and everything.
That's just like you said, one thing I'd add so from
an exploration point, Sue is spot on from a science point.
There's one other component to what the the questions that are
we're looking for in water
and that's looking specifically at the oxygen
and hydrogen have different different molecular weights.
So you can look at the isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen
and kind of get a picture for where they came from.
And that's one of the real
critical questions from a science perspective
that we're looking to answer on
in the south polar region is where did that water come from?
There are at least three different sources that we think
of. There's the sun.
The sun is peppering all of this in hydrogen all the time.
And that's a kind of think of it as a renewable resource.
It's it's peppering the surface of the moon with hydrogen.
And that hydrogen can can bond
with this hydrogen oxygen on the surface.
And form hydroxyl and potentially water.
There's also comets and asteroids.
We know
there's water on those bodies that could be delivered
to the moon.
And those carry a very different isotopic
signature, kind of a thumbprint for the water.
And tell us where it came from or it could come from inside
of the moon itself and from in the early 2000,
some very intriguing scientific studies
found that there was actually water
that was sourced from inside the moon,
and it erupted in volcanic eruptions
on the lunar surface and released that water.
And if it happened, those eruptions were massive
enough and fast enough,
It could actually have become a pretty significant source
for water.
But that those eruptions were really old in lunar history.
So understanding where that water,
where those volatiles
would have ended up and whether they're there,
kind of whether the South Pole region I sync for those
for those volatiles will help us understand
where the water on the moon came from.
And that by extension can also help us understand
where water on earth came from.
And I think those questions
out there, I think, yeah, absolutely.
And so I actually have a fun follow up to that.
So it's true.
Bono on ex
who wants to know Will we ever be able to drink moon water
and how much water is under the surface to get that?
Debora
Yes, I think that's a classic question,
isn't it? Right.
So we also bring us a limited it.
I had mentioned early,
we bring
a limited amount of water up to the International Space Station
and they have to figure out how to reclaim that water.
So they have different ways to pull the water
that it's wastewater and turn it back into drinking water.
So when we go to the surface of the moon,
like Deborah was mentioning earlier,
we are trying to learn with our eclipse missions
what kind of water are they in?
Chunks of ice are
intimately mixed where it's kind of like a dirty snowball,
like how is it that it's mixed in?
But either way, the goal is to create the technology
that's necessary to be able to extract the water
from the lunar soil in order to be able to drink
that water from the surface of the moon
and just as another note
that if anybody feels like they're now concerned
that we're drinking water instead of Earth,
just remember that the when the Earth and moon formed, they
they formed as this planetary body.
So the kinds of water that are on the moon,
we expect are very, very similar to the kinds of water
that we have here on the Earth.
So we expect that from not just that, but from the
the investigations that we've done into the water
that's in our own oceans.
There's indication
that that water comes in part from comets and asteroids,
as well as comes from the original spill
that the earth and the moon are formed from.
So there is similar the same kinds of sources
that would be the source of the
water on the moon are the same sources
that the Earth has had for its water,
that the devil did a fantastic job over viewing. So
hopefully that that gives them
a little bit of comfort knowing that
that's what it will be safe water once it's it's properly
cleaned and taken from the moon.
Also very cool to think about that.
One day we will be drinking water so
and so.
I know
we've touched on this before, but for our viewers
that are just tuning in, I want to ask it again.
We have David Sanchez on YouTube, who is wondering,
will there ever be a crew to land on the moon again, Deborah?
Yes, absolutely.
That is the plan.
So NASA's Artemis Initiative is working to get lunar
astronauts to the surface, the moon with with the goal
to study the full region of the moon.
And the reason that we've chosen the South Pole is
because there are like we've been talking about, resources
potentially in the polar region that could prove very valuable
for the state, for enabling a sustained lunar
presence, human presence on that the South Pole region.
But also those those resources are very close to areas of
prolonged illumination.
And so the sun can power the the hardware,
the architecture that we need to support
humans can be powered from the sun
and these islands of prolonged light in the South Pole, then,
yes, we're
sending humans to the moon and we're very busy planning
every all the science investigations
that they are going to achieve once they're there.
And eclipse again is a first step
in this road to sustainable lunar presence on the moon.
And we have Mance were a met on Facebook who asks,
you know what are the key scientific objectives
from the new instruments that have been operating on the moon
over the past week?
Sue, would you mind summarizing that again?
Yeah, sure. Absolutely.
So this
this kind of overall picture that we're a very early mission.
It's the very first one that Intuitive Machines
has built and sent and one of the first
that we've contracted
with commercial companies in order to go back to the moon.
So the suite of instruments on the first Intuitive Machines
Lander were very carefully selected to try to help us
to better understand how to navigate safely to the moon,
how to to land safely on the moon, how to communicate
with your lander back to the moon,
and how to look down and see how the dust gets turned up
so that in the future, while we're designing spacecraft,
that we have an understanding of what kind of dust and rocks
and things like that might get picked up by your lander,
it will help us to better design future landers for the surface
that go down to the surface of the moon.
But in addition,
some of the instruments that allow us to study the dust,
the stereo cameras for lunar surface studies
and the radio wave observations
at the lunar surface for the electrons.
These are designed to help us then also understand
does the dust,
how does the dust come up as we land,
but also how does the dust end up getting charged?
Anybody who's walked around
a little bit and kind of created a chart
and then gone and hit something and it zapped their finger.
Right.
So that there's also this charging that can happen
on the lunar surface from the sunlight that's coming in.
And So the astronauts themselves are going to have dust and
clinging to their spacesuits.
So how do we design spacesuits and how do we design instruments
to help figure out how we deal with all of the lunar dust?
So there's a lot of different things
that we can do with these early instruments
to help us better prepare better design technologies,
not just the technologies of the future instruments,
but also spacesuits and how we'r
And Deborah, how do we prioritize these questions
that we are trying to answer
with these selected investigations?
That's so NASA's looks to the science community
to help us understand
what the science objectives are and what the priorities are.
So NASA works with the National Academies
of Science and Engineering and Medicine.
And every decade, once every ten years,
we ask the academies to come up with the overarching
priorities for science and for the Science
Mission Directorate or Planetary Exploration.
And so we at NASA look to the science community
to help us establish those priorities.
And then for the instruments
that we're talking about, for cliffs, we look and see,
when we ask again, we ask the science community
to propose instruments, and they are asked to link
their investigations to those
what we call the decadal of science priorities.
But but yeah, in the end, the whole mission is to
further the knowledge
that we have of how the moon formed, how
the solar system evolved over time,
and how all of that helps us understand where we come from
on Earth as well.
So it's all turns back to
the science investigations and driven
by priorities established by the Science committee.
And it's it's very cool to just see that this is,
you know, a global unified effort
that everybody has a voice in this.
And so I a final question for you both.
What advice would you give to someone who is interested in
joining NASA's efforts to return humans to the moon soon?
Why don't you go first?
my goodness.
It's
it's such an incredible experience, right.
To work with a lot of other people
that are so driven by the science, by the technology,
and even in understanding, especially with the
understanding that there are challenges along the way.
I mean, we talked last week in our press conference
about how only our lander is the scrappy little dude
where every time there's things that need to be worked on
that we all work on together and and he always comes back and
and he really helps us to enable all of the science and all of
the technology.
The reality is that he enables the science
and technology because of the teamwork,
because people understand that it's a challenge.
It's not something super simple.
It's something you have to work really hard at.
But the rewards are just incredible
right here we are, and we have this lander
that ran for a whole week on the surface of the moon
and collected data on the way there for us in ways that
that have just been incredible to be part of as a team
with the commercial industry within machines, with NASA,
with each of our payload teams are payload teams that work
tirelessly for years getting these payloads ready.
And so it's just understanding
that if that's the kind of
challenge that you love,
if that's the kind of
incredible experience that you want to have, that
that's the kind of reward that you get.
So my my input to them is that throughout my career,
this has really been one of the most incredible experiences
that I've had.
I also didn't get a lot of sleep
over the last couple of weeks,
but it was so worth it at work with all of that
and this this great spacecraft, Debora, being one of them,
but also our full flight operations team.
I am at the payload teams.
It's just been an incredible experience.
Thank you.
And Debora, what what about any advice from you?
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think, you know,
I grew up knowing that I wanted to be a scientist,
you know, to the classes and school and all of that.
When I and I always wanted to work for NASA, like
this is a dream come true for me to work with
cultivating fly that's coming up the strategy
and implementing opportunities for science.
When I joined NASA's, you know, you always think of all
the science and engineering and all of like,
that's what I need to focus on to be a part of NASA's
joining effort.
That's just not true.
Like, there's so much
beyond science and engineering that makes NASA what it is.
It's such a
there's artists, there's graphic designers, there's
communication specialists, there's
so many other aspects to the mission to achieving
mission success.
So my advice is, if NASA's and space exploration
is something that you're passionate about,
that's that's great.
You can find whatever interests you and apply it to that.
And there's there's a place for you as part of NASA's.
So find something that you're passionate about
and there's an opportunity for you at NASA's.
Thank you so much for that.
Great advice.
You know, as you mentioned, I do comms.
Like you
said, we've got mathematicians, we've got lawyers, everything.
So there is a place for everybody at NASA
and that's really something incredible to remember.
Unfortunately, this is all the time that
we have for today.
But Sue and Deborah congratulations
on the success of this incredible endeavor.
And thank you again for taking so many questions
from our viewers online today.
I also want to say thank you to you and all the viewers.
This has just been a real pleasure.
And we hope that all the excitement
and all of the work that we put into it really helps
to inspire you, each of you individually, to become
future space explorers.
And thank you so much for having us.
This was a pleasure to answer your questions and
look forward to the next exciting mission down the line.
Yes, and thank you, too, to everybody
that joined us online today.
It is always so much fun getting to just interact with you live
and we hope that you enjoyed learning
more about the recent moon landing
and all of the exciting NASA's science that is in store now.
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Thank you all and see you next time.