Lunar Leap: Artemis 2's Historic Mission and the Future of Moon Exploration

This is Spacetime Series twenty eight, episode one hundred and fifty four, for broadcast in the thirty first of December twenty twenty five. Coming up on space Time, the Artemis two man Moon mission now slated for launch in February instead of April, rewriting a chapter of the Moon's early history, consequently that of the Earth as well, and failure for Japan's new flagship Age three rocket. All that and more coming up on Spacetime. Welcome to space Time with Stuart Gary. NASA has accelerated the launch of the historic Artemis two man Moon mission from mid April to early February. The agency has tentatively slated the week of February sixth with a two hour launch window. This will be an historic mission because it will be the first time humans have traveled to the Moon in more than half a century, ever since the days of Apollo seventeen back in nineteen seventy two. The ten day mission aboard the Orion Spacecraft Integrity, will launch aboard NASA's ninety eight meter tall three stage SOLS super heavy Lift rocket from Space Launch Complex thirty nine B at the Kennedy Space Center, Cape Canaveral Space Force Space in Florida. The crew will complete one swing around the Moon on what's known as a free return trajectory. The mission profile calls for a multi translunar injection with modible departure burns. Orion will initially be sent on a highly eccentric Earth orbit with a period of roughly twenty four hours by comparison, the International Space Station orbits much closer to the planet, taking just on ninety minutes to complete each orbit. During Orion's highly eccentric orbit, the spacecraft's crew will perform various checkouts of the vehicle, its life support systems, its ancillary components, and it will to take an in space rendezvous and proximity operation demonstration using the spent Intraimcryogenic Propulsion or upper stage as a target. The mission will also carry five cube SATs, which will be attached to the inside of the stage adapted between the SOLS upper stage and the Orion spacecraft. These will be deployed during Earth orbit and once oryan riches perigy after completing its orbit, it'll fire its main engines for its translunar injection burn that'll send the spacecraft on a lunar free return or gravity assist trajectory, swinging around the Moon with the closest approach to the lunar surface of approximately seven four hundred kilometers. Another burn maneuver will then send the spacecraft returning to Earth and ultimately splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. This report on Artemis two from nass A TV. So the most exciting thing to me about Artemis two is just the return to the Moon. We haven't been there in fifty years. Human eyes are going to see parts of the Moon that haven't been seen by anyone before. It also recommits us to exploring the Solar System in a way that we haven't in a long time, and I think it provides an opportunity for younger generations to understand the excitement of doing that kind of exploration. The Moon is this great sort of cherisciro subject because the most recognizable thing about it is the changing sun angles and how that brings out the shape of craters near the terminator, which is the day night line. Because there aren't, you know, oceans and clouds and all the things that you see on Earth. The Moon is really all about its shape, and the shape is telling you something about its long history and the history of the entire Solar System. All the things that have happened to the Earth have been erased by geologic processes and weather and climate, and that doesn't happen on the Moon. The Moon has recorded everything that's happened since its formation almost four and a half million years ago. That tells us a lot about where we came from, where the Solar System came from. It also reveals something about the composition of the Earth that we can't see because it's buried beneath the crust. Some of that is on the surface of the Moon because it's been excavated by all the impacts. Artemis is our return to the Moon after fifty years. The emphasis of Artemis is going to be first of all science, but second of all learning to sustain a presence on another world. First on the Moon, but we're hoping that that's a stepping stone to Mars and other destinations in the Solar System. Eventually, Artemis two will be a fly by mission. It's not going to land. We're testing all of the technology that we've created for flying to the Moon since Apollo. A lot of systems have been modernized, and we need to make sure that all of those work. The astronauts will be looking out the window at parts of the Moon that have never been seen by human eyes before. They will be flying by the Moon at an out that's much higher than Apollo's orbits, and so they will see the entire disk of the Moon, including areas that are closer to both the North and South Pole that astronauts from Apollo never saw. All of that depends on the lighting, which we really won't know until launch day, but we can practice with different lighting scenarios. It's hard for people to sort of picture that in their mind. If you can make a visualization of it, show them a movie that helps everybody choose the targets and also practice aiming at those targets. The astronauts have actually been looking at these visualizations through the lens of the camera and practicing aiming at the various targets. All of the Apollo flights orbited the Moon at a distance of about one hundred and ten kilometers. Because the astronauts were flying at such a low altitude, their horizon was actually quite close and they couldn't see the North and South poles. And it includes this amazing impact piece called Oriental. Oriental is a very large impact feature. It's about six hundred and fifty kilometers wide. It's got multiple rings. These are rings that form like ripples in a pond from the impact, but of course it's on a huge scale. The middle of Oriental has that sort of dark basalt lava covering it, like the dark spots that we see on the near side. It's one of the biggest ones that's more on the far side than near So seeing it with human eyes and sort of picking out features that maybe you don't even see in robotic cameras is an important goal for the mission. One of the photographic targets that is on everybody's list is pictures of the Earth beyond the limb of the Moon. During Apollo eight, on their fourth orbit, they finally turned their spacecraft around so that they could see in the direction of the Earth. Oh okay, look at that picture over there. Coming up. Hey, I'll take that. I'm judgle you get a color filmed gym. I think it surprised all of them how beautiful and how human it was to see the entire planet Earth from behind the horizon of another celestial body. That photograph called Earth Rise had a huge impact on the public because from space, you don't see country boundaries, you don't see some of the human problems that we deal with on the surface, and you also recognize that the Earth is a finite place. It's not infinite, it's not everything. It is a pale blue dot in the vastness of space. Artemis is going to have that opportunity once again. I anticipate that the astronauts will have the same feeling that the apolloid astronauts did, and I think it will have a similar effect on a new generation of people who are watching this mission unfold. And in that report on atomist too from mess A TV, we heard from Ernie Wright from NASA's god Had Space Flight Center in Greenville, Maryland. And this is space time still to come. A new study of lunar rock samples paints a different picture of the tortured history of Earth's nearest celestial companion, and it's a big fail for Japan's new flagship H three rocket. All that and more still to come on space time. A new study of lunar rock samples is painting a very different picture of the tortured history of Earth's near a celestial companion. The findings, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, pushes back the timeline of lunar at consequently Earth impacts by some three hundred million years. When the Apollo seventeen astronauts elected a small rock from the Moon more than fifty years ago, they had no way of knowing that it would still be challenging sciences understanding of luner history today. The fragment, simply known as Sample seven six five three five, formed nearly fifty kilometers under the lunar surface, but it shows no signs of the violent shocks usually expected when deep rocks are blasted up to the surface, and that puzzle has been intriguing centers for decades. Many believe the rock was blasted to the surface by the same massive impact that formed the Moon's largest crater, the giant South Pole Achin Basin, but new research is now offering a simpler explanation, but one with very broad implications. By running advanced computer simulations of giant lunar impacts, the authors has shown that the asteroid impact, which from the sor any tight space and a massive impact crater on the Moon's kne side, could have lifted our rock sample to the surface during the latest stages of its formation. The finding suggested the impact could about four point two five billion years ago. That's roughly three million years earlier than previously thought, in the process pushing the timeline of lunar impacts further back in history. Of course, that shift, reported in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, also reshapes how scientists estimate the bombardment history of Earth and other Inner Solar System planets. The studies lead author, Evan Johns from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, says this rock may be small, but it carries a huge story about the Moon's early history. He says, it's sort of like a time capsule dating back four point two five billion years now. Scientists have long agreed on two key aspects about the Apollo sample. Its chemistry and its texture show that it formed deep inside the lunar crust, and it lacks the strong shock features a typically a company a violent trip to the surface. Earlier studies proposed that only an enormous impact like the one which created the South Pole Aiken Basin could have excavated rock from such depths, but there's a catch carrying the rock from that far side. Based into the Apollo seventeen landing site would likely require an additional impact while avoiding shocks strong enough to leave telltale scars. Shones and colleagues found a more direct path, using their computer simulations of large lunar impacts to get with models of the Moon's crust. They showed that during the later collapse stage of forming a giant crater, material from tens of kilometers down can be drawn upwards gently enough to preserve rock samples like seven six five three five. In those simulations, a certain to tellus type impact can move deep material to within just a few kilometers of the surface, precisely the kind of process that could place the sample where Apollo seventeen find it. The author's models kept showing the same thing. Big impacts can lift rocks to the surface without overshocking them, and if sample seven sixty five three five dates the serenotoitous impact at four point twenty five billion years ago, other major lunar basins may also be far older than currently dated, and that moves scientists to rethink how quickly the Moon cooled and how frequently large impacts struck the Inner Solar System. Because Earth's earliest surface record has been largely erased by erosion play. Tectonics and geology scientists often calibrate Earth's impact history Using the Moon and redating a cornerstone of lunar impact would recalibrate our picture of the early Earth as well, and also how other inner Solar System planets may have evolved. By pushing through a tatus back in time, astronomers are shifting the entire timeline of when big impacts happened right across the Solar System, so it has ripple effects for understanding not just Earth's early environment, but that of our entire place in the universe. This is space time still to calme failure for Japan's new flagship AGE three rocket. Later in the Science report, how to of the world's most popular beverages coffee and tea influence burn health in older women. All that and more still to come on space time. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency JACKSA has suffered a major setback with its new flagship H three rocket, failing to place its satellite payload into orbit. The launch had already been delayedded technical issues with the rocket, and at about just seventeen seconds before liftoff due to an anomaly with the water sound suppression system on the launch pad. The H three was carrying the MICKEYPIKI five Satellite navigation System spacecraft from the Tanegashima Space Center southwest of Tokyo. However, as the rocket launched into the sky, its second stage engine burns suddenly cut off unexpectedly far earlier than planned, and that resulted in the failure of the satellite's deployment. This is the second failure for the new H three launch vehicle. It also failed on its maiden flight back in March twenty twenty three, the second stage engine failed to ignite, but in between there have been six successful launch missions. The H three rocket is designed to replace the earlier H two, a workhourse of Japan's growing space industry, which has had a near perfect success record. The new AGE three is meant to be more modular and more cost effective in the global space market. This Space Time and Time Out of Tech another brief look at some of the other stories making news and science this week. With a science report. Researchers say both small and big increases in social media use between the ages of nine and thirteen are linked with lower overall performance in tests of cognitive abilities. Findings reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association tacked increases in social media use of some six thousand, five hundred and fifty four kids over four years, categorizing them into three groups no or very low social use, low increasing social use, and high increasing social use. The kids completed a range of cognitive tests, including tests in reading, memory, and vocabulary. The authors found that both small and big increases in social media use were linked to lower scores in all these tests. They speculate that it could simply be because kids are spending more time on social media, they end up spending less time on their school work. A new studies offering fresh insights into how two of the world's most popular beverages, coffee and tea, influenced bone health in older women. The research, reported in the journal Nutrients, followed nearly ten thousand women aged sixty five and older over a decade to explore whether their daily habits of sipping coffee or tea were in any way linked to changes in bone mineral density, a key indicator of osteoporosis. Ory They found that tea drinkers had a slightly higher hip bone mineral density suggesting modest benefits for bone health. A new study has shown that artificial intelligence systems huge massive amounts of energy to operate, in fact, more energy than it takes to light up New York City. A report of the journal Patterns claims AI chatbots like Chat GTP are environmentally quite destructive, with a carbon footprint between thirty two point six and seventy nine point seven million tons of carbon dioxide over a single twelve month period. That is not just pollution and greenhouse gases. The findings also show AI is consumed between three hundred and twelve point five and seven hundred and sixty four point six billion liters of water every year just for cooling. Androids and robots will be dominating news that the world's biggest consumer and electronics show CES, which will be held in Las Vegas next week. With the details, we're joined by Technology editor Alex Harrolroyt from Tech Why start. Lie The past couple of years, of course, has been AI AI AI and the thing that has always stopped home robots from being real. Besides the fact that it's difficult. To make a humanoid robot that can easily glide around, walk around, deal with stairs, and have the dexterity needed to handle plates, or help your feeniors or handle babies. Is the fact that you need a robot with an AI brain to be able to talk to you like a human could reason, ask questions, decide to do things autonomously. And so we finally live in an era where we have at least llm AI systems that can pretend to think. I mean, I don't really think they can think the way that humans thinks yet, but. They are showing up language models. Right large language model, which is a way of predicting what the next word will be in the answer that it gives you to a question you've posed by comparing the words that appear. In other answers across the entire. Corpus of the Internet that it's been able to ingest. And so that's not really thinking, that's just. Predicting what the next word would be. And of course we've seen AI systems get things completely wrong, very confidently, giving us incorrect answer and hallucinating. And if robots trying to think whether to put an ingredient or use a particular mushroom that it may have foraged in your back garden that may or may not be poisonous. I mean you'd have to really be sure to trust the AI brain that it's doing the right thing. Well, the long the shot is that we now live in an era where you can have robots that have this manual dexterity and can look like robots and can handle things. I've seen a humanoid style robot driving a car, for example, anything that can be handled by a human. If the robot looks and acts like a human, then it can be handled by that robot. And we did see earlier this year the one x dot Tech robot called Neo, and it was a humanoid robot of just thought you would expect from all the sci fi dreams. I mean, it looked like a human. It could load the washing machine full of dishes or clothes, It could put clothes into the dry could water your plants outside, It could help you bring things in from the car. I mean it was a robot of the sort you would expect from sci fi. And that robot goes on sale if we're twenty thousand dollars, or you can lease it for four. Hundred nine nine US a month. Now CES is meant to be all about robots, and I have read a number of companies already emailing me years saying we're going to have humanoid robots on display, But where is someone like a Samsung or an LG. Now, back in I think twenty twenty one, we did see Samsung had a what looked like a tower fan with this arm coming out. Of the top. It's kind of a comical robot that looked nothing like the robot you would expect, but at least it could move around it and had the arm that could do things like pack the dishwasher, but it was definitely not humanoid. Then we have Samsung with its Bally, which is a bit like the BB eight from Star Wars, except that don't you have the balls, didn't have the top section which was the head with the camera as the eye, and you know that can roll around and it can projectings on walls and it can help you do things. But it's very much a non humanoid robot. So LG has come out just on Christmas Day with. A press release saying that their robot will be call LG Cloyd clo ID with I in lowercase and the rest of the characters in upper case and sci fi. They've just shown a hand they haven't shown the full robot in any of the images they've shared, and the hand looks like one of the hands you'd see on those robots from Boston Dynamics or from Elon Musk, the Optimus robots. That's so obviously a robotic can And they're saying that this robot is designed to perform indoor household tasks. And they're calling the vision the zero. Labor home makes quality time. Now, this is a future where technology helps reduce the burden of daily chores. It's of housework. And look, we have seen AI powered. Or intelligence washing machines. I remember the Fisher and Pikal washing machine had some sort of fuzzy logic in the systems to know whether it should apply more force or less when it's washing certain types of clothes. And that was around long before AI. Remember the Japanese talking about fuzzy logic a couple of decades ago, which again is an aiesque kind of move. But now we have devices that you can talk to. You can talk to your fridge. If you have a Samsung fridge, you can say, hey, Biggs, you can ask it to look at the ingredients you. Have in the fridge. And suggests recipes, and this natural language user interface with our appliances is going to become more common. But the other end of that scale is to have humanoid robots that can just use the appliances that we use, and instead of having to talk to. The appliance, you talk to the robot and get it to do things. So you know, this robot is built to perform. A variety of tasks within the home. And look, we will talk more about this one. I've had a chance to see it and we get to see the exact image of what looks like. But it talks about two articulated arms powered by motors and with seven degrees of freedom, providing motion similar to natural movements, which by natural that obviously needs human movements. And there are five individually actuated fingers on each hand to provide dexterity so that kloid can perform delicate and precise tasks that require FI and motor control. So you can imagine that by twenty thirty these sorts of robots will be on sale in the Best Buys and the Harvey Normans and jbhigh fives and. Boots in the UK. And you know, the traditional electronics big box department type store. They'll be selling these robot Butler's for your home. I mean, they'll come with different names. Android Cloyd. I mean. The problem with the word droids is that that is actually a term that's licensed to Lucasfilm because of the droids that are in Star Wars. So yet to see what's going to happen there, but I'm sure people will have real life R two D two star robots, except much less clumsier and much less dense than the C three Po appeared to be at times, much less annoying. But this should be commonplace. Well, that's right. You want C three PO. Because he is a human old robot. But if you had an R two D two that could move. Around, sort of glide around, that then could grow arms as needed to be able to help you with things and even lift itself up. Couldn't have a robot. That they couldn't walk downstairs. Well, that is one of the problems. And in fact I have heard on the quiet from one of the vacuum cleaner makers they have a robot that can go up and downstairs properly, so I'm being told. And yes, the. Daleks and also two D two they couldn't go upstairs, and there was an episode of Doctor Who where the dialect did have jet and could fly up the stairs. And in the original prequel trilogy, not the original trilogy, but in the prequel trilogy, I think in the Middle movie there was a moment where Chid did indeed fly to little jets. But those are the jets. Won't be appearing in Robots anytime soon for the home because you can imagine those jets are going to blow air everywhere, or if they are jets that have you know the well, Rumor has actually gone out of I think Rumor has gone out of business. I mean they're being bought by somebody else, but they're one of the original robot vacuum cleaner companies that no longer exists. So we're seeing kind of consolidation all over the place. But having a robot, which is something Apple has spoken of as well. But this next five years is going to. See robots and AI, which is basically a computer on either legs or wheels, become autonomous and mobile and a true robot sidekick. It's going to be something we'll see over the next five years that's going to change the world. That's alexaharav Rouyt from Take Advice, Dart Life, and This space Time and that's the show for now. Spacetime is available every Monday, Wednesday and Friday through at bites dot com, SoundCloud, YouTube, your favorite podcast download provider, and from space Time with Stuart Gary dot com. Space Time's also broadcast through the National Science Foundation, on Science Own Radio and on both iHeartRadio and tune In Radio. And you can help to support our show by visiting the Spacetime Store for a range of promotional merchandising goodies, or by becoming a Spacetime Patron, which gives you access to triple episode commercial free versions of the show, as well as lots of bonnus audio content which doesn't go to weir, access to our exclusive Facebook group, and other rewards. Just go to space Time with Stewart Gary dot com for full details. You've been listening to Spacetime with Stuart Garry. This has been another quality podcast production from bytes dot com.