Today’s Mission to the Moon

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Download it for free today. It's devastating when you see a game that you could have won. From New York Times, I'm Michael Babaro. This is a daily. When you release six decades after the United States put men on the moon.

What? It is returning to that mission. And today, a major step in that process will begin in Florida. My colleague Ken Chang is there and explains why it is that the United States wants to go back to the moon.

It's Wednesday, April 1st. Can we come back to the daily? Good to be here again.

So, we always turn to you when something big and meaningful is happening in space

and something big and meaningful is happening today. Whether permitting.

“So, does the weather permit this big and meaningful thing to happen on Wednesday?”

Hopefully it looks good. The forecast says 80% chance that's it's going to go. But that means there's 20% chance that something doesn't quite clear up. Right. Okay, that's a pretty good odds.

So, start by describing this mission. This is the first time that anyone's going close to the moon in more than 53 years. Now, four astronauts are going to be blasting off from candy space center in Florida. And they're going to head out to the moon. They're not going to land.

They're just going to swing around the moon and then head straight back to Earth and splash down the Pacific Ocean 10 days later. And why? I mean, as you've just hinted at, some 50, so years ago, astronauts from the United States did that very thing.

So why are we doing it again? So the goal this time in this program, which is called Artemis, is to get people back to the moon, but also stay there this time. And so this program is broken up into pieces because it's really hard to land on the moon. You don't want to do all the hard things all at once.

You want to break up into pieces so you do step by step. Right. So Artemis, one back in 2022, it sent this spacecraft to the moon and spent several weeks there, without any people aboard. So that sort of established that the basic machinery works.

Now we're on the next step, which is Artemis 2. This time, they're including the four people aboard.

And that's critical because the main task of this mission is to test life support systems.

And it's impossible to test it without actual people producing carbon dioxide, producing water

“and poop and everything else that you need to clean up.”

Right. So that's this mission. Step one was, can we get an aircraft around the moon? Step two is, can we get people on this craft to live? Yes.

The biggest goal for the astronaut on this mission is to not die. And if Artemis 2 succeeds, NASA can move onto the next steps, which will lead to attempts to land astronauts on the moon in a couple of years. Okay. And at this point, I may sound like a broken record, but why?

And what is the rationale for trying to do this thing that we did with great fanfare 50 something years ago? What NASA says is that this time, we're not going to just go there and then forget about that this will be the first step to building a moon base to a moon base. So that they're going to start putting a power plant, some habitats, to allow people

to stay there for days, weeks, months. So at first, it will probably be a scientific research station, much like what we have in

Beyond that, people will start thinking about how we can take advantage of the moon's resources.

“They might even start trying to mind valuable materials that could be found there, such as helium-3.”

And what's helium-3? And why do we want to mind it on the moon? So helium-3 is a light version of helium, and it's quite rare on Earth. It's a little bit more prevalent on the moon's surface, and this is a version of helium that could be very useful in future fusion reactors.

It's also thought to be useful for future quantum computers, which people are very excited about, because it could be used for artificial intelligence among other things.

And helium-3 on Earth costs roughly $3 million a pound.

Wow!

“So if you can even get a little bit from the moon, you could probably make them profit.”

Right. So what lies in the future is space research, and potentially some serious commercial mining. Yes, they're so speculative, but there are companies who are planning to do things along those lines already. And then there's scientific dreamers who want to do something like build a big radio telescope on the far side of the moon to listen to the universe. Listen to the universe.

Yes, there's signals from just after the big bang billions of years ago.

But it's hard to do that from Earth, because we've basically made things very noisy with TV, cell phone calls, podcasts.

But on the far side of the moon, you have the entire thickness of the moon blocking all that noise. Wow. So you can hear the rest of the universe. Wait, just a way to understand. We can build a giant listening post on the far side of the moon, where it's dead quiet.

And we could hear the ancient sounds of really the dawn of time itself. Pretty much, these would be almost the echoes of the big bang. Wow.

And the other thing they wanted to do is use the moon as a testing ground for technologies that they ultimately want to put on Mars.

That would include nuclear power plants, habitats, life support systems, because many of the conditions on the moon are things you ultimately had to face on Mars as well. So basically, would use the moon and its conditions and its gravity to figure out whether something we eventually want to have on Mars can first survive the moon. Yes. And then there's this romantic notion of humanity just spreading out into solar system that we are no longer just confined to one planet, but we can live elsewhere as well.

Some day on a moon colony. But on top of all that, there's also the geopolitical competition with China. And of course, we want to do all this before they do. Right. If we were to be a multi-planet species, Americans would like to be the first. Because the people who are there first are the ones who make the rules of how space commerce is conducted.

We'll have the prime locations on the moon and control the resources and so on. So being first means being the one who's in charge. Can what you have just laid out is a tremendous vision for the future and all of it rests on the shoulders of four astronauts who are going to be blasting off toward the moon in a few hours on Wednesday there on Florida. True, but that's probably not what is going to be on their minds.

“Remember, their first job is staying alive. If they don't do that, then all these dreams are even farther into the future.”

We'll do it back. I'm Brian Rosenford. I'm an investigative reporter at the New York Times. My dad is a scientist. My career has been devoted to scientific teaching and research. I remember growing up. I didn't fully understand what he was doing every day.

But now that I work as an investigative journalist, I do understand. I have to start with facts from those facts, hypothesis appears and then you work on trying to test that I foster. I do the same thing. I'm taining documents, crunching the data and I've talked to as many people as possible to get to the bottom of the story.

The best scientists are able to do that deep work because they receive funding from the university or from the government.

“We as journalists depend on funding from subscribers. You can support that type of work by subscribing to the New York Times.”

Can you introduce us to these four astronauts who have all of us responsibility on their shoulders and describe the logistics of this 10-day mission they're embarking on from their perspective? Yes, the commander is Reid Weissman. We just need to go and speak to submission and bring a little bit of each of our own personalities. He's a former fighter pilot in U.S. Navy. He served in the Middle East on two deployments. And he was the head of the astronaut office before he stepped down which allowed him to be assigned to the moon mission.

I was outside the last night and I was looking about up at the moon and thinking the next time I see this site, there's a good chance that we will have been around the far side and back. And there's also a point in detail about him. His wife died a few years ago. Him going to moon means leaving his daughters behind for 10 days. And so I hope there's a piece of it that extends beyond human spaceflight as well.

He's also a former naval aviator. Ten years from now when the next challenging thing happens,

“maybe we can look back on this and go, hey guys remember we did that?”

We had our own moonshot remember and it was global. It was international and we did it together.

He was the first black man to serve an extended stay on the space station.

And now he'll be the first black man to go to the moon. Next is Christina Cog. None of us can be as big as what we're asked to do, but we can contribute the part and bring our best selves. We come together to do it. She's an electrical engineer by training. And she actually worked on NASA missions on the ground before she was selected by NASA to become a astronaut.

And she now holds the record for the longest single spaceflight by women of 328 days. It's almost a full year. All these things that we talk about first are really not about any one individual's accomplishment, but more about celebrating where we are at. And finally there's Jeremy Hansen. He's the Canadian on the crew.

“You can't fix all the problems in the world, but you can influence the little bit around you.”

It'd be the first time that a non-American has gone to the space.

We don't know the ripple effects of what we're about to do, but we can do it well to best of our ability and have joy while we're doing it. And hopefully that will make a small contribution. And he has a sense of humor about this. He said if something goes wrong in this mission, then NASA can blame Canada. Okay, so that is the crew. Talk to us about their next 10 days.

As they are going to experience it, the four of them together. So they will have a very long day before launch event. They'll wake up 8 hours before launch. They have to get into their space suits. They'll be driven out to a launch pad. They'll go up this huge tower and enter their spacecraft.

It's known as Orion. Then they'll be sitting there for about four hours until the countdown clock gets to zero. And 8 minutes later, they'll be in space. Wow. And that first day in space will also be quite busy.

They won't immediately go to the moon. In fact, what they'll do is make two looping orbits around Earth. And the reason they're doing that is they want to take this time to check out every low system on the spacecraft to make sure it's working. Before they make the decision to fire the engines to send them off to the moon. Basically, a couple of test flights.

Right. So after day two, when they fire the engines through head to the moon,

the moon is closer quarter million miles from Earth.

So it takes a while to get there. Basically four days. And they'll be spending all this time in this capsule, which has about as much space as too many vans. And I say this is a father that fills basically many vans.

That's not allowed space. It's actually a little bit more than it'd be on Earth because you get to float around. So you can use all the space above you. It's not quite as crowded as it would be if you were driving across country. Right.

So on day six is the big event. This is when they are closest to the moon.

So the way NASA describes it, the moon will appear about the size of a basketball held at arm's length.

And the moon's gravity will basically pull them around the moon.

And they'll go behind the moon. So that means they'll lose all radio communication with Earth for about 40 minutes. And we won't know what's going on until they immerse on the other side. And during this time, they'll also be making all these observations of the far side of the moon. Hmm.

Such as.

So what's really interesting is that they will be seeing parts of the far side of the moon

that no human eyes have seen before. And that's because the last time in astronaut passed over the far side of the moon. It was a different time of day and those areas were in darkness. So that's fascinating. These astronauts, because there will be light,

will cast their eyes on parts of the moon that no human being has ever seen before in actual daylight. Correct. On the moon, there's no street lights. So the last time in astronaut passed over these parts, it was completely dark.

“So can as these astronauts are moving along the far side of the moon?”

You had said that the moon's gravity was going to be holding them down. How much power will they have to actually direct the craft that they're in during this period? The trajectory that they're on, not that the design is specifically that they actually don't need to use the engines to bring them back to Earth.

It's going along a path that the gravity moon basically is going to sling them around and throw them right back toward Earth without them doing much of anything.

So in a sense, they're kind of powerless to do much themselves. They're at the mercy of the moon's gravitational push and pull. Which is a good thing because it's much easier to be headed back to Earth than into deep space where who knows where you would end up.

“Right. So assuming this gravitational sling shot system brings these four astronauts safely home, what happens?”

So once they complete their lunar flyby, they have to spend another three days just sitting around waiting to get back to Earth. This is probably the boring part of the trip. It's okay over there yet. On the very last day, Earth's skype is going to be pulling them around Earth and they'll be on a path to re-enter the atmosphere and they'll splash down his Pacific Ocean off San Diego. They'll be plugged out the ocean, taken to a ship, and then flown back to shore where they'll be checked out by doctors.

And then they'll get to fly back to Houston, and that will be the end of Artemis II. And assuming that the astronauts leave this process in tip top shape, which we of course hope they do, my sense is that this is going to be a really proud moment for NASA. Because from everything I've taken from your reporting in the lead up to Artemis II, it's really a NASA production through and through. And not what we think of when we think of the modern space system where things kind of get divided up between NASA and these well-known private companies, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk.

Here's my call. This is old school NASA, where NASA designed and operated at the very spacecraft. And it'll be a triumph for them in that the old ways of doing things succeeded. But on the very next mission, Artemis III, the new space companies, SpaceX run by Elon Musk and Blue Origin started by Jeff Bezos. They become involved because SpaceX and Blue Origin are producing the lunar landers that are eventually going to take astronauts to the surface of the moon.

“Got it. So in these next phases, these big private companies are going to be providing some of the really key equipment that will allow NASA to land on the moon.”

So in that sense, Artemis II is kind of the end of an era. And since yes, this expectation is this will be the last big NASA spacecraft in rockets. And the future there will be much more work from private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin. You know, can just to end this conversation, it's pretty hard to ignore the context of when Artemis II is happening right now or in the middle of a war.

I think of space exploration as at its best this big unifying experience for the whole world and this mission comes at a moment that's not so unifying.

“But if you think back to the 1960s when we went to the moon for the first time, that was a turbulent era, especially the year 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated.”

Robert Kennedy was assassinated. The country was fired in the Vietnam War. The Democratic Convention of Chicago was beset by riots. It was a very unsettled time in the United States. And at the end of that year, December of 1968. The engines arrived. Four, three, two, one, zero. We have come in. We have Apollo 8 launch. Oh, there's the Rumble in our building. And that was the equivalent of Artemis II.

It's a beautiful take off so far.

“It was the first launch of the mighty Saturn V rocket that NASA used then with people aboard.”

And the three astronauts on Apollo 8, they went to the moon or visit the moon and on Christmas Eve. They're now approaching a lunar sunrise. And for all the people back on Earth, we grew up Apollo 8, have a message that we would like to send to you. As they were in orbit around the moon. The beginning, God created the heaven in the earth. The three astronauts took turns reading Genesis from the Bible.

And the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters and God said, "Let there be light." And there was light. And it was such a calming, hopeful moment that some people even talked about how that mission saved 1968. So we don't know what the four astronauts on Artemis II are playing to say as they are coming back from the moon.

But still, just the imagery that's going to come back of them seeing Earth from a quarter million miles away,

could just provide a moment of calm that makes us realize we are still all part of the same planet. And perhaps so just offer a note of hope that maybe they won't be as turbulent as it seems right now. Well, Ken, thank you very much, we appreciate it. Thank you. I hope it goes off perfectly later today. We do.

And God drove and drive on Earth, and they carried me together, but water is probably safe. God's thought that it was good. And from the Bureau of Apollo 8, we called with good night. Let's watch the Merry Christmas and God bless all of you all of you on the good Earth. We'll do a back.

“Here's what else you need to know today.”

On Tuesday afternoon, a federal judge ordered that President Trump and construction of his proposed massive ballroom off the east wing of the White House, until the project is blessed by Congress.

The decision delivered the first meaningful setback to the President's increasingly bold efforts to redesign the White House.

And for the first time since the start of the war in Iran, the average price of gasoline across the United States surpassed four dollars a gallon, a major milestone for consumers.

What happened in 24 hours where we went?

“In Jacksonville, Florida, Kim Judy, the gas station manager.”

We spoke to for Friday's episode, raised his prices on Tuesday to 429 a gallon.

That's up more than 50 percent since the start of the war.

“And it's just caught everybody off guard, including myself. So it's upsetting. And I hope it will last long.”

Prices are expected to remain high until oil can flow freely through the straight of hormones.

Today's episode was produced by Alec Stern, Jack Disodoro, where Shell Bongeau and Diana Winn.

“It was edited by Rachel Quester, and contains music by Mariel Azana, Dan Powell and Diana Waw.”

Our theme music is by Wonderley. This episode was engineered by Alyssa Moxley, special thanks to Timothy Bella. That's it for daily. I'm McBoward. See you tomorrow.