- Welcome everyone to Wednesday
Nite @ the Lab,
I'm Tom Zinnen and we're here
at the UW-Madison Biotechnology
Center.
I also work for the Division of E
xtension here at UW-Madison
and on behalf of those folks and
our other co-organizers,
Wisconsin Public Television, Wisc
onsin Alumni Association
and the UW-Madison Science Alli
ance,
thanks again for coming to Wedn
esday Nite @ the Lab.
We do this every Wednesday night
50 times a year.
And speaking of 50,
[audience chuckling]
tonight we have a very very joyo
us event to celebrate hence
my happy shirt.
[audience laughing]
From the summer of '69, the
50th anniversary
of the landing on the moon,
by the folks on Apollo 11.
Jaime Cordova is here.
He's from the Department of
Genetics.
He's also a NASA Solar System
Ambassador.
He's going to be talking with us
about the next giant leak.
Excuse me, the next giant leap f
rom the Apollo program
through life sciences research
for the journey to Mars.
Jaime was born in Lynwood, Calif
ornia
and he went to Warren High School
in Downey, California.
And he went to Cal State Long Bea
ch
where he studied molecular and ce
ll biology,
and is here as a PhD genetics st
udent in the Perna lab.
You'll notice if you saw the pict
ure that Jaime had
that we promoted, it was in fron
t
of the Griffith Observatory and
that place is famous
for many things but at least
two big movies.
One wasRebel Without a Cause
and the other more recent,La L
a Land.
And I think that really make
s Jaime special.
[audience laughing]
So please join me in welcomin
g Jaime Cordova
to Wednesday Nite @ the Lab.
[audience applauding]
- All right, can you guys hear me
?
All right, cool, awesome.
All right, so hello everyone.
Thank you all for being here, it
's really a privilege
to be here to speak to you all.
My Wednesday Nite @ the Lab is
a little bit different
as I hope you can all tell
and some of you have already told
me,
I did not work on Apollo,
I am much too young to have w
orked on Apollo.
[audience laughing]
So I won't be speaking about
my own work
which made it a little difficult
when Tom asked me
to share a personal connection.
So I thought well what can I sha
re?
So I figured, or after a lot of t
hinking I realized
that I had two connections, e
xcuse me.
My first connection was really i
n terms of my love
for flight and my love for s
pace flight.
As far as I can remember,
I've always been fascinated by fl
ight,
I have a scar right here from a m
etal toy plane
that someone gave me when I was
like four years old
which is a great gift to give a f
our year old, right?
Something I could easily cut
myself with.
My mom loves telling that story,
said that I did that.
Beyond that as time progressed,
I remember, another recollection
is second grade
laying down in the room on my flo
or
with a stack of books on all the
planets including Pluto,
with all the planets there.
And I remember just being so f
ascinated.
And as time progressed, my sec
ond grade teacher,
he noticed that I had a real i
nterest in science
and particularly in the planets.
And actually I forgot to mention,
my love for flight
continued on for a long time
where I actually, I grew up unde
rneath
the LAX final approach path,
and this is one of my favorite
planes, the Lufthansa 747.
I just wanted to mention that. [l
aughing]
So anyways, back to the original
story,
is my second grade teacher notice
d
I had a real love for science an
d for astronomy.
So he gave me this book which
I actually still have at home.
I remember two distinct memories
about this book.
One was crying my eyes out
when I was reading about black ho
les,
because I was so scared I wa
s going to die soon
despite people telling me tha
t the sun
wasn't going to die for another
five billion years
and even then now knowing that i
t won't turn
into a black hole.
My second memory is reading abou
t the space shuttle
and reading about a cruise going
up to space.
And I remember thinking just
how cool it was
that every once in a while peop
le would occasionally
get to go into space.
I started watching all the space
shuttle launches.
Unfortunately there was a time w
here there weren't any
because I started watching them
shortly
before the Columbia disaster.
But my love for space continued
and I eventually started asking m
y parents,
I was like, "Hey, you know what?
"I really want a book on space,"
because around that time I still
didn't really
know how to use the Internet.
So, good old books, and I actual
ly still have the book
that they gave me, and this is,
or that I got at the book fair
that I asked 'em to buy me.
And what was cool about this b
ook is it just had
so much information on the plane
ts,
on crewed missions, things like
that.
My love for astronomy and that's
really where my love
for astronomy and for spacefligh
t kind of took off,
no pun intended.
After high school, I started volu
nteering
at the California Science Center
with the space shuttle Endeavour
and I was there
for about five years
before I actually moved here
to Madison.
Along with being there, I wa
s working at a job,
at a paint store and I got tired
of selling paint.
So what I ended up doing is I wa
nted to switch a job,
and by chance when I was deciding
that I really wanted to quit that
job,
for a variety of reasons,
I ran into an application for th
e Griffith Observatory.
And I started working there a li
ttle bit
over three years ago.
And that's really kind of where i
t all took off
and it's really thanks to this b
ook.
And one of my favorite things ab
out this book is well one,
it was published in 2000 but in h
ere
it says that the James Webb S
pace Telescope
is supposed to be launching by
2007.
[audience laughing]
Now the people who laughed unders
tood why that's funny.
That's because the James Webb Spa
ce Telescope
hasn't launched yet, yeah.
So it's 12 years overdue and th
e reason why it's overdue
is really because launching thin
gs into space is hard,
along with not only space telesc
opes and satellites
but sending humans is hard, into
space.
But we love the challenge, we lov
e the challenge
of going into space.
When President Kennedy almost
60 years ago
challenged the nation, we decide
d to take on that.
- Say the moon.
Why choose this as our goal?
And they may well ask, "Why clim
b the highest mountain?
"Why 35 years ago fly the Atlant
ic?
"Why does Rice play Texas?"
[audience laughing]
We choose to go to the moon.
[crowd applauding and cheering]
We choose to go to the moon i
n this decade
and do the other things,
not because they are easy, but be
cause they are hard.
- Now with President Kennedy's
challenge to the nation
and to NASA, it led to the de
velopment of Project Apollo.
And this is where my second conne
ction comes in.
No, I'm not a Kennedy and again
no, I didn't work on Apollo,
but with the project, with NASA g
etting this challenge
and deciding to hopefully take h
umans to the moon,
they decided to hire a large numb
er of contractors.
One in particular or one special
to me
is North American Rockwell w
hich, sorry,
North American Aviation whic
h eventually
became North American Rockwell,
which was,
their plant was in Downey, my hom
etown.
And actually here's a picture fr
om the museum there,
that's the Columbia Memorial Spa
ce Center
which has a boiler plate from the
Apollo era outside.
The command and service module
were actually built there,
which is again that's why it's
kind of special to me
because I kind of grew up there
for the past couple of years.
And for a long time actually d
idn't know
this took place there until I re
ally started getting
deep into the weeds of the hi
story of Downey.
But this was just one of the cen
ters.
Excuse me, this was just one of
the centers.
As you saw on that map, there we
re so many contractors
who were actually working on the
Apollo program,
and well over 400,000 people wor
ked on it
to get man to the moon.
Now, as many of you may know,
or I'm sure you probably know, is
the project
actually ended almost shortly be
fore it even got started.
And that's because of its tr
agic beginnings.
That's with Apollo 1 with Gus
Grissom, Edward White,
and Roger Chaffee.
The launch was planned for Fe
bruary 21st, 1967
but unfortunately the crew perish
ed on January 27th, 1967.
[static crackles]
Oh, didn't play how it was suppo
sed to.
Let me try that again.
[static crackles] - Man: Fire in
the cockpit!
Sorry about that.
So there was a fire aboard the c
apsule
and the launch crew was not able
to get to them in time unfortuna
tely.
This tragic accident ended up sen
ding NASA
back to the drawing board.
Now sending them back to the dra
wing board
and also putting the manned progr
am to a stop.
Now, before the mission, the crew
expressed several concerns
and this is actually at the Nort
h American Aviation plant
in Downey, the crew expressed se
veral concerns
about the capsule, including that
it had
a lot of combustible material
on the inside.
It was pressurized, was 100% oxy
gen here on Earth
and the capsule door didn't have
any explosive bolts.
They also weren't able to actual
ly open it from the inside,
meaning that only people on the o
utside can open it.
But NASA decided to approve the
launch anyway
and because of that,
the astronauts decided to take th
is relatively,
this pretty cryptic picture wher
e they were praying to,
where they were praying with
the Apollo capsule
right next to it.
And unfortunately disaster struc
k.
As I mentioned, NASA put a stop t
o the manned missions
but they continued with unmanned
tests,
dubbed Apollo 4, 5, and 6.
First is Apollo 4, which was the
first test of the Saturn,
of the new Saturn V launch vehic
le.
Apollo 1 was used as Saturn 1B ve
hicle.
And this was unmanned I should s
ay again.
Then came Apollo 5, which was th
e first test
of the lunar module.
This was again using a Saturn 1B.
And then finally the final te
st was Apollo 6
which used the Saturn 5 again.
Now with this particular mission
,
it carried a payload that was ap
proximately 80%
of the payload of a full Apoll
o mission.
At some point during the launch,
something went wrong;
it still made it into space,
but it didn't go into its planne
d orbit.
Because of that, some people didn
't totally feel comfortable
with the Saturn 5 still.
But NASA decided that because Apo
llo 4
had to work so successfully, they
decided to,
they were confident to use it in
crewed missions.
And during this time, the Apollo
capsule had been improved
and the concerns of Apollo 1 had
been addressed
including as you can see right he
re,
or one of the many things was th
e door being able
to be opened from the inside.
And the reason behind this actual
ly,
the reason behind this is NASA r
eally didn't want
their astronauts' lives to go in
vain.
And I been just researching all
this
which I learned a lot about the
Apollo missions
more than I ever thought I would.
I ran into this quote from Gus G
rissom
that "The conquest of space is w
orth the risk of life."
And NASA again was determined
to not let their lives go in vain
.
So 20 months later, came Apollo
7
which carried Donn Eisele, Wally
Schirra
and Walter Cunningham.
This was the first successful la
unch of a crewed launch
into space for the Apollo program
.
And this uses Saturn 1B.
This was meant to place the ne
w capsule under tests
and fortunately, it worked out.
In addition to being the firs
t capsule test,
excuse me, it was also the fi
rst TV broadcast
of Americans from space.
And despite the astronauts really
not wanting to do it,
they dubbed it The Walt, Wally, a
nd Donn Show.
[audience laughing]
- Man: It says from that lovely A
pollo something?
You guys should write-
- Man: Apollo Room.
High atop everything.
- Man: Looks good, I can see Wa
lly handle it now,
Donn has a smile on his face
, and there's Walt.
Okay, what's the next one?
A little closer Wally. [beeping]
Keep those cards coming.
- Man: Lots of letters coming in.
- [laughing] So yeah, so they re
ally didn't want to do it
and as you can see, it didn't
all work out.
Some of them you were able to rea
d but not all of it.
A couple of months later came Apo
llo 8,
which ended up going beyond Earth
.
This carried Frank Borman II, Wi
lliam Anders,
and former UW Badger James Lovell
Jr.
For those of you who may not be f
amiliar,
James Lovell came here to the Un
iversity of Wisconsin
before traveling or before trans
ferring
to the Naval Academy.
Now this mission was considered
the Christmas mission
because it launched on December
21st.
And as you can tell by the missi
on patch,
it was the first crewed spacecraf
t
to actually go beyond Earth orbi
t and to the moon.
And this actually also was th
e first launch
of the Saturn 5 rocket.
It was originally planned to
be uncrewed,
but because of the success of the
prior missions
and growing concern that the
Soviet Union would potentially
put a man into orbit first,
they decided to turn this into
a crewed mission after all.
And with this resulting or w
hat the goal
of this particular mission wa
s, was again
not only to test the Saturn 5
and to go into that orbit,
but also to take high-resolution
pictures
of potential landing sites.
And this mission was considered a
success
that allowed the astronauts to g
o into lunar orbit,
making them the first to escape E
arth's gravity
and along with also being the fi
rst to use Saturn 5 rocket
or crewed Saturn 5.
And another, one of the many r
esults of this image
is something that you all may be
very familiar with
which is the iconic Earthrise im
age.
It's a very beautiful picture.
Then next came Apollo 9 and by
the way I'm just going to
do a quick little review of all t
he Apollo missions,
so to go through the whole histor
y.
Then next came Apollo 9 which,
the goal of this was to put the
lunar module to the test.
This carried James McDivitt,
David Scott,
and Rusty Schweickart.
The mission launched on March 3rd
and unlike Apollo 8, this actual
ly was
an Earth orbiting mission.
So they didn't go around, they
didn't go around the moon.
This was the first crewed missio
n of the lunar module,
and actually the lunar module
was originally
supposed to go on Apollo 8,
but when it was delivered ther
e were several defects
and NASA basically decided finall
y
that we shouldn't launch somethi
ng
that may be a little defective.
Sorry, that sounded a lot shadie
r than it should have.
The crew tested various docking
and undocking maneuvers,
and along with performing extrave
hicular activity, so yeah.
Then finally came Apollo 10, wh
ich was one last practice
as I like to call it.
This carried Gene Cernan, Thomas
Stafford, and John Young.
The mission launched just two mo
nths after Apollo 9
on May 18th, and this was NASA's
final dress rehearsal
before the lunar landing.
They were really starting to pick
up speed
and again it was exceptionally
critical for this mission
to be successful, because it was
the last time
that they got to practice essenti
ally.
Fortunately, it was a success an
d they did everything
but actually landing on the moon.
Two months later, 50 years ago ye
sterday,
came the day that the nation
and the world was awaiting on.
- Man: 15 seconds, guidance is in
ternal.
12, 11, 10, 9,
ignition sequence start.
6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0.
All engines running.
We have a liftoff, liftoff on Apo
llo 11.
- Apollo 11 launched at 8:32 a.m.
Eastern Standard Time
and as you'll see throughout the
presentation
and maybe along these walls you
guys may have noticed
theWisconsin State Journal,
I spent a couple of hours
at the archives making sure
that I got
some of these pictures to sho
w to you all.
Yeah, it launched July 16th, 1969
at 8:32 a.m. Eastern Time.
And for those of you who may not
know,
I'd strongly recommend, CBS is a
ctually replaying
all of Walter Cronkite's coverag
e
which you'll hear me mention a li
ttle bit
throughout the presentation.
So Apollo 11's destination was th
e moon,
and arguably carrying the most f
amous astronauts
which I probably don't even h
ave to tell you.
Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins,
and Buzz Aldrin.
As I mentioned, the mission laun
ched on July 16th
and it lasted through July 24th
with the goal of being the first
human moon landing
and having Armstrong step on the
moon.
They traveled for a little bit ov
er three days before
actually reaching the moon's orb
it on July 19th,
with the goal of landing in the S
ea of Tranquility.
And if you're not familiar,
this is the side that faces,
the side of the moon that faces
us.
Armstrong and Aldrin went into
the lunar module on July 20th
at approximately 1:11 Eastern Tim
e
or 1:11 p.m. Eastern Time.
And I tried very hard to find,
I went into like five archives to
try
and find more pictures of them
before they actually touched down
and I could not find anything.
So sorry, but yeah, they went int
o the lunar module
on July 20th.
And then Michael Collins ac
tually stayed
on the command module.
He's often called the loneliest,
or referred to as a loneliest pe
rson in the universe,
but he said multiple times includ
ing
in a very recent interview wh
ich I believe was yesterday,
was just published yesterday,
that he actually wasn't lonely at
all.
He actually enjoyed the peace an
d quiet
of being up there by himself.
I'm sure throughout the stre
ss of the mission,
[laughing]
he says that he would drink co
ffee while he was up there
and would occasionally get to
listen to music
during his free time.
And he would especially get so
me peace and quiet
during the occasional 40 minutes
that he lost control,
that he lost contact with Mission
Control
which I'm sure was nice.
[audience laughing]
The astronauts, Aldrin and Armstr
ong started their descent
onto the moon.
It was actually not a very, not
a smooth descent
and this is something I just
recently learned.
There were a series of anomalies
that happened during the land
ing, including alarms going off
and they started running out of f
uel.
So they had to take over a manua
l landing
and it actually ended up being
that they were off target
by a couple of miles.
But eventually at 3:17 p.m. East
ern Time on July 20th, 1969,
50 years ago this Saturday, they
made history.
- Buzz: Contact light, okay,
engine stop.
- Mission Control: We copy you d
own Eagle.
- Neil: Tranquility Base here. Th
e Eagle has landed.
- As I already mentioned, CBS
replaying Walter Cronkite's cover
age.
And I was watching it yesterday
and I think he described it best.
Man's dream and I quote,
"Man's dream and a nation's
pledge has now been fulfilled,
the lunar age had begun."
This nation, and there was a mome
nt
that changed the nation and the w
orld.
From what I understand, about
650 million people
around the world paused what
they were doing
to watch the historic moment.
And watching a couple of intervie
ws,
Armstrong and Aldrin mentioned
that they didn't actually have a
lot of emotion.
They just kind of smiled at each
other,
a little smile of satisfaction
and then they shook hands.
After having landed on the m
oon for about,
or after being on the moon for a
bout six hours,
that's actually when Armstrong ut
tered
his most famous phrase.
- Neil: Ladder, the LM footpad
s are only
depressed in the surface about
one or two inches.
Although the surface appears to b
e
very, very fine grained as y
ou get close to it.
It's almost like a powder.
Down there it's very fine.
I'm going to step off the LM now
.
That's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
- Now someone has already ment
ioned to me
before the presentation started.
Did he say one small step for a m
an
or one small step for man?
From what I understand and fr
om what,
me listening to it, I heard one
small step for man.
But he says that he had inte
nded to say one small step
for a man, it's up for debate.
I'm just going to go with what
he said on the video.
[laughing]
But yeah, they were on the m
oon for about,
for a little bit over 21 hours.
So 21 hours and 36 minutes.
Their EVA, or extravehicular
activity
was about two and a half hours h
owever,
so that's probably the amount of
time it took you
to get here,
watch this, go home, and times tw
o.
In Los Angeles, that's how long
it would take me
just to get to work, [audience
laughing]
so yeah. [laughing]
While they were there, Armstr
ong set up,
Armstrong and Aldrin set up
the early Apollo scientific packa
ge
near the lunar module and this w
as a scientific package
that would be replicated through
out
the other Apollo missions
with the goal of basically gather
ing the same measurements,
gathering the same measurements
throughout all the different land
ing sites.
Now one of the experiments on
the left
is the passive seismic experiment
which is used to detect moon quak
es
to hopefully provide information
on the interior structure
of the moon.
This is the first time that a
seismometer
had ever been placed on another w
orld.
And I'll just throw a quick plug
,
a seismometer was placed last yea
r on a second world.
The Insight mission to Mars plac
ed a seismometer there.
You can actually go online and l
isten
to some of the recordings and li
sten to the sound of Mars.
Additionally, on the right was
a laser ranging retroreflector.
This was used to measure the dist
ance
between the moon and Earth and re
ally,
not only determine the distance
between the moon and Earth
but also determine at what rate t
he moon
is moving away from us.
So every year the moon moves ab
out one and a half inches
away from us, meaning then in
maybe 500 million years is t
he estimate I saw,
we won't have total solar eclips
es.
So they'll all be annular eclips
es.
So enjoy them while you can. [lau
ghs]
[audience laughing]
The next one here in the United S
tates is April 2024.
So you only have to drive a litt
le bit south to see it.
And this from what I understand,
this retroreflector is still bei
ng used
if I remember correctly.
In addition to that, they also se
t up
the solar wind experiment, whic
h is used to collect
solar wind particles.
So it was essentially, figure a
sheet of aluminum foil
to collect solar wind particles.
And so they could return to Earth
for analysis
and this is impossible here o
n Earth
thanks to our lovely magnetic fie
lds
that help protect us from the s
olar wind
and also give us beautiful aurora
s
which we can apparently occa
sionally see here in Madison.
And another quick mention.
So the solar wind is just basica
lly high-energy particles
that travel throughout the so
lar system.
And that solar wind is actuall
y why Mars
doesn't have an atmosphere.
It doesn't have a magnetic field
to protect it
from the solar wind,
so its atmosphere was stripped
billions of years ago.
And finally, another main goal of
the mission
was to collect lunar samples
to understand the moon's history
.
On Apollo 11, Armstrong and Aldr
in
collected about 50 pounds worth
of rocks and soil samples.
And some of these apparently are
still unopened
and they're all housed at the
Johnson Kennedy,
at the Johnson Space Center in Ho
uston.
And you can actually watch a vide
o online.
It's like a bank vault essent
ially to actually get in there.
Now this was important not on
ly for NASA,
but it was actually also had a
local connection.
There were two professors here a
t the university,
Eugene, I was supposed to be able
to read that.
Eugene Cameron and Larry Haskin w
ho were chosen
to actually analyze these soil
samples and the rock samples.
I didn't run into any of their
data,
but a couple of Wisconsin co
nnections.
They left various mementos such a
s pictures of families,
messages from nations' leaders, a
nd this plaque,
and of course the famous flag.
And a fun fact is that I believe
this flag was bought at Sears.
[audience laughing]
It was either bought at Sears an
d that's what I read,
it was either bought at Sears
or it was made
by someone from Milwaukee.
So there's two kind of confli
cting stories.
Essentially, NASA didn't want a r
epeat of Tang,
and if you guys are familiar with
that story, so yeah.
The crew remained on the moon f
or about 21 hours
and 36 minutes before actually
launching off the moon.
And they took off from the moon a
t 12:54 p.m. on July 21st
and docked with the command modu
le approximately
three hours later.
They returned to Earth heroes
to all mankind.
And a couple of more Wisconsin co
nnections
is you can see here that they re
turned
as I mentioned on July 24th.
Well, something interesting is
when they landed in the Pacific
Ocean,
is the crew that picked them up
was the USS Hornet.
Well, there was a crew on board
which was being supported or sor
ry,
the USS Hornet was being supporte
d
by a squadron of helicopters kn
own as the Black Knights.
Well, the commander of the squad
ron
and the pilot of the helicopter
that day happened to be
UW-Madison alumni and Madison na
tive,
Commander Donald Jones.
And unfortunately Commander Jone
s passed away
a couple of years ago,
but he was the one to help recove
r them.
Another Wisconsin connection
is Navy Lieutenant Clancy Hatle
berg.
He is from Chippewa Falls and he
's actually,
in this picture he's the guy who'
s closing the dock
and he's the one who provided
the astronauts
with their biohazard suits
and also essentially bleached the
m down because
of the risk of contaminants from
the moon.
Now we're all familiar with P
resident,
we all may be familiar with P
resident Nixon's,
with this picture of President
Nixon
talking to the astronauts after
they returned
in their quarantine.
In doing a lot of research,
and looking through several pape
rs and articles,
I'm pretty confident to say t
hat the reason
why they were in quarantine
also has a University of Wisconsi
n-Madison connection.
So Professor Joshua Lederberg
and his wife, Esther Lederberg
were researchers here at the uni
versity.
He received the Nobel Prize in 1
958
for work on bacterial conjugatio
n,
something that they were both the
researchers on.
Do with that information what you
will.
After the launch of Sputnik in 19
57,
Lederberg became concerned
about the risk of humans contamin
ating space,
excuse me, the risk of humans con
taminating space
and astronauts bringing back cont
aminants from other worlds.
So he wrote a letter to the Na
tional Academy of Sciences
and he made it very clear that
this was something of concern
and something that they should
take into consideration.
And in 1958, they sent,
they created or they wrote
a official concern letter about t
his.
So again I'd like to, I woul
d feel comfortable
in attributing their quarantine t
o him.
After that, after they were re
leased
from their 21-day quarantine,
they were welcomed into the nati
on or around the nation
as American heroes.
Now the program continued with s
ix missions
but only five landings.
And I'm sure you know why.
Apollo 12, it was an electrifyi
ng return
to the moon as I'd like to call i
t.
This carried Charles Conrad,
Richard Gordon, and Alan Bean.
The mission was from November 14
th to November 24th,
just a couple of months after Ap
ollo 11 had touched down.
This mission actually almost did
n't go up.
Well, it almost didn't go all th
e way up I should say.
The reason behind that is during
the launch, by chance,
lightning struck the Saturn 5 twi
ce
and essentially fried, or not fr
ied I should say,
but turned off all the electronic
s on the inside,
so the astronauts were flying bl
indly.
From what I understand, they
only had
about a minute time window before
they actually,
okay let's try and figure somethi
ng out
or let's abort and not keep going
.
Fortunately they were able t
o find a solution
that one flight controller happen
ed to remember
from a training the year before.
They ended up making it to the
moon successfully
and put down the Apollo lunar su
rface experiments package
which as I mentioned was, the ear
lier version
was carried on Apollo 11.
And the goal was again to gat
her information
from each landing site.
And they also collected piec
es of Surveyor 3
which had landed earlier for anal
ysis.
And Surveyor 3 is from the jet,
if I remember correctly, was dev
eloped
by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
which the Solar System Ambassador
s is housed by.
Then there's unlucky Number 13.
The mission carried Fred Haise
Jr., John Swigert
and James Lovell Jr.
Again when I was practicing this,
someone told me you shouldn't sa
y that James Lovell
was unlucky because he still
didn't end up
making it to the moon, but he
still didn't end up
making it to the moon unfortunate
ly
so I'm going to say it anyways.
During the launch or I'm sorry,
when they made it into space, the
re was an explosion
in one of the oxygen tanks on
the command and service module,
which essentially caused a lot of
damage to it.
And there was a risk that the a
stronauts
may not make it home.
And I know there's a lot more
to this story
but in terms of time, just going
to keep it short.
The crew ended up not making it
to the moon
and Mission Control had to f
igure out a way
to get the astronauts back home
safely.
While Mission Control was figuri
ng out
how to get them back home, here o
n the ground,
the astronauts on board were t
rying to replicate
the same thing.
They ended up using the lunar mo
dule kind of as a life raft
after hot-wiring it because some
of the batteries
had gone down.
And after overcoming several chal
lenges
including the loss of navigation
system
where they had to use,
they basically had to use the su
n, stars,
and the Earth's terminator,
which is a division between the
day and night,
to actually be able to make it b
ack home.
And another little connection I w
ill add
is that astronauts for the Ap
ollo program
trained at Griffith Observatory
using our planetarium
during their training.
So again the crew didn't end up m
aking it to the moon,
but they did thankfully make
it back to Earth
four days later.
Then came Apollo 14 which was th
e most extensive science,
the mission with the most extensi
ve sciences.
This carried Stuart Roosa, Alan
Shepard, and Edgar Mitchell.
The launch was January 31st
and lasted through February 9,
1971.
And Apollo 14, 15, 16, and 17 all
became focused
on landing the astronauts on vari
ous locations of the moon
to help gather a variety of rock
samples.
And Apollo 14 landed on the moon
's Fra Mauro formation
which is an area that was believ
ed to have created,
to have been created as a re
sult of a collision
between the moon and a very large
mass.
And it happened to end up being
a great place to study
and this was actually the origin
al landing site
for Apollo 13, had they made it.
They also studied the lunar iono
sphere.
And this time, as opposed to the
passive seismic experiment,
they used an active seismic expe
riment
which provided them information
on the structure
of the top 100 meters of the
lunar regolith.
In addition to that, Roosa to
ok measurements
on regional variations of the gr
avitational acceleration.
There was also a scattering
of the radar that he was doing
while he was up on the command mo
dule.
Another cool thing about this mis
sion
is they collected a large amount
of samples,
which was about 97 pounds of roc
ks
including my personal favorite,
Big Bertha,
that you guys may be familiar wit
h, yeah.
So it's a very big rock.
And I don't think any oh, well,
I don't think any of these are Bi
g Bertha but yeah.
Then another favorite moment was
Alan Shepard golfing.
- Alan: Houston, while you'
re looking that up,
you might recognize what I h
ave in my hand
is the handle for the contingenc
y sample return.
It just so happens to have a
genuine six iron
on the bottom of it.
In my left hand, I have a li
ttle white pellet
that's familiar to millions o
f Americans.
I'll drop it down.
Unfortunately, the suit is so sti
ff
I can't do this with two hands,
but I'm going to try a little san
d-trap shot here.
[audience laughing]
- Ed: You got more dirt than
ball that time.
[Jaime and audience laughing]
- Alan: Got more dirt than ball,
here we go again.
- Fred: That looked like a s
lice to me, Al.
- Alan: Here we go.
Straight as a die, one more.
Miles and miles and miles.
[Jaime and audience laughing]
- After Apollo 14 came Apollo 15
,
which included David Scott,
Alfred Worden, and James Irwin
and a new member riding along
with them,
the Lunar Roving Vehicle.
The mission went on from July 26,
so just a little bit over two
years after Apollo 11.
And this was the first time that
the Lunar Roving Vehicle
had actually gone up and it was
meant to be used
on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 as well
.
This allowed the astronauts to t
ravel a lot farther
from the lunar module than previo
us.
And in fact, on Apollo 14,
Alan Shepard set the record f
or how far away
an astronaut had walked away fro
m the lunar module
at 9,000 feet.
On this mission, on Apollo 15, it
allowed the astronauts
to go about 17 miles, so yeah.
Apollo 15 was actually the
first of a new type of mission
known as an Apollo G mission, whe
re it allowed
the astronauts to actually stay
longer
for almost three days as opposed
to a little bit under a day
for the previous missions.
And another cool video which,
so one of my favorite things abou
t science is that,
I mean I love science a lot,
but I love how there's times wher
e you can just do
the silliest experiments and it w
orks out.
And I love that this is how,
and I genuinely love that this
is how our tax dollars went.
- David: On my left hand I h
ave a feather,
in my right hand a hammer.
I guess one of the reasons we g
ot here today
was because of a gentleman na
med Galileo a long time ago,
who made a rather significant di
scovery
about falling objects in gravity
fields.
And we thought that where would
be a better place
to confirm his findings than
on the moon.
And so we thought we'd try it
here for you.
The feather happens to be approp
riately a falcon feather,
for our falcon,
and I'll drop the two of 'em here
and hopefully they'll hit the gr
ound at the same time.
How about that?
[Jaime and audience laughing]
Mr. Galileo was correct in h
is findings.
- I love that, when I saw that I
was like,
"That's the coolest thing ever.
"Just, let's drop that."
Apollo 16 was the first time that
a biology experiment
had actually been done on the mo
on.
It carried Ken Mattingly, John
Young, and Charles Duke Jr.
This was a couple of months later
on April 16th
and it lasted through April 27th
, 1972.
And as I mentioned, it was the f
irst time
that a biology experiment had
been taken into space.
This is known as the biostack.
And the goal of it was to test t
he biological effects
of various heavy cosmic part
icles essentially
coming from space that we are, a
s I mentioned earlier,
protected from here on Earth.
And this biostack actually carri
ed a variety
of different organisms and se
eds and spores,
so like arabidopsis, bacillus sub
tilis.
So just a variety of experiments
which I thought was pretty cool,
being a biologist.
They also were able to, I tried
to find the video
of John Young roving around.
I could not find a decent quality
video
that wouldn't just be all grainy.
But they kept on exploring
and continued using the seis
mic experience
and all the other experiments us
ed in the Apollo package.
And finally came Apollo 17,
which I like to call "Not the En
d."
The mission carried Harrison Sch
mitt,
who was the first and only scien
tist to travel
on the Apollo missions and is
also apparently,
I just learned the other day at t
hree in the morning
when I couldn't sleep, that h
e is actually
an adjunct professor here at
the university.
So that was pretty neat.
It also carried Eugene Cernan and
Ronald Evans.
And the mission took off December
7th
and it came back down on Decembe
r 19th.
And this was the final launch
of Apollo.
It was also the most extensive mi
ssion
where three EVAs were done
or extravehicular activities,
sorry.
Each one was about seven hours
and they were on the moon
for a little bit more than three
days.
Cernan and Schmitt ended up colle
cting
about 243 pounds worth of materia
l.
I mean it was the last time that
who knows until when,
well now we know at least 50
years, right?
That we'd go back to the moon.
And one of the things that Schm
itt got excited about
being a geologist, is this orange
soil
that is right here, and you
can kind of see it right here.
Yeah, didn't come out as great
on the projector.
But yeah, that soil was something
that he was super interested
and there's a video where he's l
ike "Wow, orange soil,
"come check this out."
And from what I understand,
he ended up replacing another cr
ew member
and some of, the two other crew m
embers
weren't so excited until they rea
lized
that hey, he's a scientist, aweso
me.
And these samples as I mentioned
earlier,
some of them have gone unopened.
They continue to provide more and
more information
about the moon as new tools and
techniques
are being developed.
And with that came Cernan and
Schmitt's launch from the moon
and they remain the last men to
walk on the moon
and no humans have been back sin
ce December 14th.
We'll let that video play.
There we go.
- Harrison: 99 proceeded, thre
e, two, one, ignition.
- Eugene: We're on our way, Hou
ston.
- Harrison: Rates are good, AGS
solid.
- And with that was the end
of the Apollo missions.
In total about 33 people, I'm so
rry, not about.
33 people flew, there were s
ix moon landings,
12 astronauts walked on the
moon and over 840,
and about 842 pounds of moon roc
ks were returned.
What we learned from the Apollo
missions
is that the moon is not a primor
dial object, it is ancient
and it still preserves an ear
ly history
of the terrestrial planets.
The youngest moon rocks prov
ided us information
that told us that they're basica
lly as old
as the oldest Earth rocks and al
so,
unfortunately to astrobiologists,
that it's lifeless
and it contains no living organ
isms,
fossils, or native organic compou
nds.
As you saw me call it, I called
it "Not the End"
because the moon has never real
ly been the end goal.
I was watching, again I'm going
to keep up
bringing Walter Cronkite up.
I was watching the replay of
the coverage
and he had Arthur Clarke,
the author of2001: A nSpace
Odysseyon as a guest
and it was funny.
The Saturn 5 hadn't even launche
d yet.
It was I think like five minutes
before it was launching.
And Arthur Clarke was already
talking about "Yeah,
"we're going to go to the moon,"
and that was 50 years ago.
And well, I mean we haven't been
there obviously
and we haven't been back to the
moon.
But NASA's next goal, their new
campaign
aims to do just that.
With the new Explore Moon to
Mars campaign.
The Moon to Mars campaign will
use the Space Launch System
which when it is developed, will
be the most powerful rocket
ever developed, even more powerf
ul than the Saturn 5.
And its first launch is estima
ted to be in 2024.
It will carry the Orion capsule,
which is just slightly bigger th
an the Apollo capsule.
If you've ever seen an Apollo ca
psule,
kind of give you a picture of it.
And its first mission and its, s
orry.
The goal of it is to again carry
astronauts to the moon
and to Mars with the first missio
n being Artemis 1,
I was about to call it Explor
ation Mission 1,
but we just changed it to Artemi
s 1.
And if you're not familiar, I
believe Artemis 1
is the sister, twin sister of Apo
llo, thank you.
So yeah.
Now another goal of NASA is,
or to help with the journey to M
ars
is to actually set up a lunar ga
teway around the moon.
And the goal of this is to actual
ly set up a gateway,
or essentially an orbiting s
pace station,
that will orbit the moon that'll
make it easier
for astronauts to launch from th
e moon
and then go on for the journey to
Mars.
Now before we actually go to Mar
s,
there's several challenges that
we need to overcome,
mostly focused on humans, such a
s food for example.
We can't carry it all.
And so because the journey to Mar
s
is roughly two to three year
s round-trip.
So we need to grow this food in s
pace and grow it on Mars.
Well, thankfully here at the Univ
ersity of Wisconsin-Madison
there have been several endeavor
s to grow plants in space
including potatoes, which you ma
y be familiar
with Spuds in Space,
arabidopsis and brachypodium.
Now another little personal conn
ection is Skylab.
Skylab, the first plant experime
nt
or one of the first plant experi
ments
was actually done by a student
from Downey High School.
They were rivals to Warren High
School
so I don't give 'em too much pro
ps, but nonetheless.
[Jaime and audience laughing]
Donald Schlack proposed an experi
ment to study rice seeds,
and it happened to be so similar
to Joel Wordekemper's experiment
from Nebraska
that they actually ended up
sending both of them together.
And the experiment was done agai
n in 1973 aboard Skylab.
Then now coming back to the Univ
ersity of Wisconsin.
was Spuds in Space.
This flew aboard STS-73 on the sp
ace shuttle Columbia
which again unfortunately perish
ed in 2003.
And this was in 1995 and it carr
ied five potato leaves.
And it was the first time that f
ood had ever actually
been grown in orbit.
And what it was and actually let
me go to this picture first
with Astronaut Coleman actual
ly planting
these whatchmacallit, these leav
es.
They actually sprouted tubers.
And it was the first time that fo
od
had ever actually been grown in
space.
And Tom told me that this is a p
articular point
I should make a point of, [laugh
ing]
that it was the University of Wi
sconsin.
Now the cool thing about this is
that it opened the doors
for a lot of horticulture experi
ments on board.
This was in 1995, I believe
is what I said.
Yeah, 1995, sorry.
So it was in 1995, and the goal o
f it was to again
be able to grow food in spac
e and test this out
for whenever the International
Space Station was built,
which wouldn't happen for at leas
t another three years.
Not only with the goal of one
, creating food
for the astronauts, but also act
ing
as a natural recycling system
essentially,
where the plants would absorb
the oxygen,
I'm sorry, absorb the carbon diox
ide, release oxygen,
and purify water by transpiration
.
Then a second experiment that w
ent up into space
from the university was the Wisc
onsin fast plants,
our brassica rapa.
These were onboard Mir.
This was actually two years late
r
and the succession, though the
experiment itself was not run
by the university, this successio
n
was actually created here at
the university.
And what's cool about these
particular plants
is that they have a life cycle
of about 45 days,
making them ideal for use in spa
ce
because astronauts only have
so much time
to dedicate to a particular expe
riment, right?
There's so many experiments
that go on
that you only get a certain time
window
and if you miss that time window
, then it's done.
Another cool thing about this
is that you can actually buy them
online. [laughing]
I tried to buy some and,
I don't know if it let me or no
t or,
I just wasn't, I'm not good with
plants,
that's why I study bacteria, so y
eah.
And these actually had a part two
.
On STS-87, the fast plant seeds
went up again,
and this time it was part of an
educational component
where school children around the
U.S. and in the Ukraine,
over 500,000 students I believe,
were growing these plants
in their own classrooms to h
elp mirror
the experiments that were going
on aboard the space shuttle.
Then finally, the International
Space Station.
Its construction began in 1998
and it was a new place to grow,
to study plants under microgravi
ty.
And two groups here at the Univer
sity of Wisconsin
currently take advantage of that.
The first which you may be famili
ar with is the Gilroy Lab.
They are in the department of bo
tany,
and they've had four launches so
far with more
in the pipeline including one
this year around Christmastime
and one potentially next year, ea
rly next year.
But as you all know space is dif
ficult.
So sometimes that may change, bu
t we'll see. [laughs]
Now I'm going to be focusing on t
heir most recent experiment
that launched, which was aboard S
paceX,
a commercial resupply mission,
commercial supply service missio
n number 13
that launched on December 13th 20
17.
[rocket engine roaring]
Now during this mission,
the group sent up arabidopsis th
aliana,
and the goal of it was to test a
nd I'm going to try
and remember the name,
it's for the test of arabidopsis
space transcriptome
or TOAST, and I genuinely though
t about bringing
a piece of toast on here jus
t to act as a,
just as a prop.
Now if you're not familiar,
the transcriptome is essentially
the set of genes
that are being expressed in an or
ganism.
And this, this grew--
The goal of this was to actually
see how or what the genetic
and molecular stress response
was in space.
Because the group had noticed th
at while they're growing
on board the International Space
Station,
for whatever reason they weren't
getting enough oxygen
and they were exhibiting a stress
response.
And the lab sent up a variety
of strains
or I'm sorry, accessions.
So a wild type strain and others
as well.
And here you can see Canadian Spa
ce Agency
Astronaut David Saint-Jacques gr
owing this.
And then this is actually in
side of the VEGGIE component
aboard the space station.
And the VEGGIE component was
also produced here in Madison,
developed by Orbital Technologies
also known as Orbitec.
And unlike everything else that
NASA makes,
it doesn't have an acronym.
So VEGGIE doesn't stand anything
, it's just called VEGGIE.
[audience laughing]
And this was also used for, to gr
ow space lettuce
which made a lot of news when Sc
ott Kelly
was aboard the space station.
And thanks to my good friends ove
r
at the Gilroy Astrobotany La
boratory,
they were able to share some vid
eos to test you all.
So can you tell me which ones wer
e the ones
that grew on earth and which ones
were the ones
that grew up in space?
[audience murmuring]
So left was what?
Earth, okay.
And then so then right is in spac
e,
and that's correct, because yo
u can tell
that on these, yeah the roots ex
actly.
So the roots were growing straig
ht downward
or aboard, the plants that grow
onboard
the International Space Station
were kind of a little wonky.
Well, in following with the
Wisconsin idea,
the group wished to produce,
to do outreach with knowledge th
at's being learned here
at the university throughout Wisc
onsin and the world,
the group actually made all
their TOAST data,
all the transcriptomics open
access.
So anyone who's interested i
n this data
can actually go online to the
ir website
on astrobotany.com or you ca
n use the QR code
if you'd like.
So if someone wants to try that
out,
you can go in and download all th
is data and access it
and play around with it.
And also following along with
the Wisconsin idea, the group,
there we go.
The group developed this, this d
evice
which is called a 3D klinoset.
And basically what it does, is i
t randomizes gravity.
So anything that's growing inside
like plants, microbes,
embryos or stem cells, someth
ing like that,
they don't have a sense of gravi
ty.
And the group is particularly exc
ited
because they're actually the firs
t to integrate lights
and to integrate camera.
So they can look at what effect
and there's some of the ligh
ts right there.
They can actually look at to
what effect
the different light variables ar
e playing
on to these plants or whatever
they're growing in there.
And again the goal in following a
long
with the Wisconsin idea,
the group is hopefully planning
on using this experiment
with students around the country
,
at least around Madison, so they
can replicate
the TOAST data.
And one of their, there you go.
And one of the group's upcomi
ng missions,
a little sneak preview is Tic-Toc
or the Targeting Improves Cotton
Through Orbital Cultivation
and this is in partnership with T
arget.
And the goal of this is to unders
tand
how cotton grows up in space.
So now going from arabidopsis
to hopefully understanding cotton
.
Now a second group that does wor
k in space
here at the university and pa
rticularly
in my home department is the lab
of Patrick Masson.
His group launched APEX-06.
So it's Patrick and his co-i
nvestigator, Shih-Heng Su.
And this is a picture of them at
Kennedy Space Center
that they thankfully provided to
me.
Now they sent up brachypodium.
The reason why they sent up brac
hypodium,
the goal behind understanding it
, is it's a major,
it's a model for all major crops
that are monocots, sorry.
So some of these for example, ot
her monocots are barley,
oats, and wheat.
Now the reasoning behind doing
the study is yes,
there's a lot of data from arabi
dopsis,
but arabidopsis is a dicot.
So it's unclear whether that
data can actually
be extrapolated to monocots.
Now, the group's mission launched
aboard SpaceX
resupply mission number 14 wit
h three questions.
One, will they grow at all?
Because it was the first time tha
t brachypodium
had ever been sent up to space.
And also would there be differenc
es
between ground control and th
e ISS growth?
and what are the growth and tran
scriptomic responses?
And here you can actually see a v
ideo
of Astronaut Scott Tingle inject
ing the media
and actually they were awesome
enough to lend me this.
So this is a space-rated device t
o actually be able
to grow their brachypodium plant
s.
So basically what you can do, or
what they do I should say
is they insert at least, or at mo
st I should say,
six brachypodium seeds onto each
side
that have been surface sterilized
.
Now the goal behind that, or the
goal behind this
is with arabidopsis,
you use a particular wavelength
of light to make sure
that it doesn't, to make sure it
doesn't germinate
before it gets into space.
Well, it turns out that that same
wavelength of light
actually activates germination in
brachypodium.
Of course, right?
So the goal of this was to, as y
ou can see in the video
down on the bottom, the goal of
it is,
that the plants remain dry and th
en the astronaut
connects a tube under here and a
ctually injects
the medium into there and rehydr
ating them.
At the same time, while the astr
onauts
were doing their experiment up o
n the space station,
the group replicated the experime
nt here on Earth.
And there was a delay of two
days in the way
that they grew their experiment t
o time along
with the way that the experiment
was being done
aboard the space station.
And again, they were awesome eno
ugh
to provide me some pictures.
So can you tell which one is the
one,
this one's maybe a little har
der to tell.
Can you tell me which one is
the one that is
was grown in space, which one wa
s grown here on Earth?
[audience murmuring]
Right is space?
All right, yeah, awesome.
So yeah, so the ones that were g
rown on the right,
that are on the right were grown
aboard the International Space St
ation.
And I should mention that t
hey actually grew
three different accessions that h
ad a very,
basically three different strain
s of brachypodium
and that's because they all show
different growth profiles.
And then here's another litt
le close-up.
That's pretty awesome.
And this is the group's first mi
ssion
and they hope to launch some more
.
Now aside from plants, [laughing]
aside from plants,
we actually need to take care
of these space farmers, right?
So we need to understand what doe
s microgravity
and what does living in space,
what effect does that have on as
tronauts?
Because again the journey to Mars
is two to three years
so they're going to be living ou
t there for a long time.
So the Human Research Progra
m, a NASA program
has been studying this with fo
cusing
on five different hazards to
humans including microgravity,
isolation, because I mean you're
in a tight space
with only three other people for
two years.
So I hope you like them.
Hostile environments, radiation
and the distance from Earth.
So these are the five focuses th
at NASA has
and these were actually also the
focuses of a study
that you all may be familiar with
,
which is the NASA Twins Study.
The NASA Twins Study happened in
2015
and it focused on astronaut Scot
t Kelly
and astronaut Mark Kelly.
NASA is lucky enough to have twin
astronauts in their group.
So Scott went up to space for 34
0 days.
He launched on March 28th, 2015
while Mark stayed here on Earth.
Excuse me, and this is actually
part of the one-year mission
which also include Mikhail Korn
ienko
and he was also in space for abou
t 340 days.
And throughout the whole time,
while they were off in space, Mar
k here on Earth
was taking the same measurements,
he was basically kind of eating
the same things,
doing the same exercises.
So they can have a one-to-one
comparison.
Scott and Mikhail eventually re
turned on March 1st, 2016
having spent 340 days aboard the
space station.
Now with this, this was as I men
tioned
and part of the NASA Twins Study
which incorporated 10 different
research areas.
And after a couple of years wh
ich I was finally excited,
the paper was finally published.
It was a summary paper that w
as published
in April of this year.
So that data is out there but it
's a 22-page paper,
so I'm not going to give you all
the results.
But I will give you some of
the top three.
First is telomeres.
So they noticed a change in Scott
's telomeres where,
sorry, what telomeres are is
that every time
that the cell replicates these sh
orten a little bit,
they act to protect the chromoso
mes.
Well, they noticed that for
whatever reason,
in Scott they actually length
ened while he was up in space.
Now does that necessarily mean t
hat he got younger?
And that is a picture of Scott a
nd Mark
from when they were three years
old.
Not necessarily,
because once he actually returned
to Earth,
they continued doing studies on h
im and they found
that they just basically went bac
k to normal.
Another major result was their im
mune system.
So you can see that both Scott a
nd Mark
were injecting themselves with t
he flu vaccine
to test what their immune system
response was.
And it turns out it was basi
cally the same.
So awesome, perfect, right?
And then the last one was they n
oticed changes
in gene expression.
Now that's not changes in the
actual genes.
When the story came out there wa
s a lot of like wait,
so the genes were changed or
what was it?
But no, it was just simply the wa
y
that their genes were expressed
so how they were being produced,
or how the protein was being prod
uced.
And they also noticed that Scott
, sorry,
he had changes in his gene expre
ssion.
But in addition to that, they als
o found
that there was a lot of DNA damag
e.
And one of the causes of DNA dama
ge
in particular is radiation.
And being up in space, you're ex
posed to a lot more radiation
than you are here on Earth.
The majority of the changes in h
is gene expression
returned back to normal after
some time,
but he still ended up with a lot
of DNA damage.
For a lot of these results,
NASA isn't necessarily sure
what the longer term effects are
.
Now in science, you don't just d
o an n of one, right?
You want to have at least three,
at least three replicates
or more than that,
otherwise you won't get publishe
d, right?
[audience laughing]
So yeah, so NASA's future direc
tions
for the Human Research Program
is that they will actually be,
they've actually already proposed
to replicate this study.
Not unfortunately with anothe
r set of twins
but just in general with other a
stronauts
to replicate what they're doing
up in space
and then here on Earth and ta
ke measurements.
And in addition to that, beca
use generally
they only stay up there for I me
an,
at this point now a year,
what NASA is planning on doing
is taking measurements
or having astronauts focus on o
ne month, six months,
and a year long so they can
actually extrapolate that data
and figure out how quickly
and when are those changes occurr
ing.
And finally, I'd like to just sa
y and share NASA's message
that we are indeed going back
to the moon
and we are indeed hopefully goin
g back to Mars.
Or sorry, not going back, going
to Mars [laughing]
and hopefully going back to the m
oon by 2024.
And I'll close with this video.
- Male Narrator: 50 years ago we
pioneered a path to the moon.
The trail we blazed cut through
the fictions of science
and showed us all what was pos
sible.
Today our calling to explore is e
ven greater.
To go farther, we must be able t
o sustain missions
of greater distance and duration
.
We must use the resources we fin
d at our destinations.
We must overcome radiation, isol
ation, gravity,
and extreme environments like nev
er before.
These are the challenges we face
to push
the bounds of humanity.
We're going to the moon to stay b
y 2024.
And this is how.
- Woman: This all starts wit
h the ability
to get larger, heavier payloa
ds off planet
and beyond Earth's gravity.
- Man: For these we design an ent
irely new rocket.
- The Space Launch System.
SLS will be the most powerful ro
cket ever developed.
- Woman: And with components in
production,
- and more in testing.
- Woman: This system is capable
of being the catalyst
for deep-space missions.
- Woman: We need a capsule
that can support humans from laun
ch,
- Woman: Through deep space
and return safely back to earth.
- Woman: For this we've built
Orion.
- This is NASA's next-generation
human space capsule.
- Man: Using data from lunar orb
iters
that continue to reveal the moon
's hazards and resources,
we're currently developing an ent
irely new approach
to landing and operating on t
he moon.
- Man: Using our commercial partn
ers
to deliver science instruments
and robotics to the surface,
we're paving the way for human
missions in 2024.
- Narrator: Our charge is to g
o quickly and to stay,
to press our collective effo
rts forward
with a fervor that will see us r
eturn to the moon
in a manner that is wholly differ
ent than 50 years ago.
- Woman: We want lunar landers
that are reusable,
that can land anywhere on the
lunar surface.
- Woman: The simplest way to do s
o
is to give them a platform
in orbit around the moon from whi
ch to transition.
- Man: An orbiting platform
to host deep-space experiments
and be a waypoint for human caps
ules.
We call this lunar outpost, Gat
eway.
- Woman: The beauty of the Gatew
ay
is that it can be moved between
orbits.
- Man: It will balance betwee
n the Earth
and moon's gravity.
- Woman: In a position that is id
eal for launching
even deeper space missions.
- In 2009, we learned that the mo
on contains millions
of tons of water ice.
- Man: This ice can be extracted
and purified for water.
- We can separate oxygen for bre
athing
or hydrogen for rocket fuel.
- Woman: The moon is quite unique
ly suited to prepare us
- and propel us to Mars and beyon
d.
- This is what we are building.
- This is what we're training for
.
- This we can replicate througho
ut the solar system.
- This is the next chapter of hum
an space exploration.
- Narrator: Humans are the most f
ragile element
of this entire endeavor, and yet
we go for humanity.
We go to the moon and on to Mars
to seek knowledge
and understanding and to share i
t with all.
We go knowing our efforts will c
reate opportunities
that cannot be foreseen.
We go because we are destined t
o explore
and see it with our own eyes.
We turn towards the moon now not
as a conclusion,
but as preparation, as a checkpo
int
toward all that lies beyond.
Our greatest adventures rema
in ahead of us.
We are going.
- We're going.
- We are going.
[rocket blasting off]
- We are going.
- We're going.
- And with that, I'd be happy to
take any questions.
[audience applauding]