Instant Genius - Dr Jacob Bleacher: Why do we need to go back to the Moon?

Episode Date: July 6, 2020

In 1969, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people ever to walk on the Moon, a feat over the next three and a half years only 10 other space explorers would go on to achieve. Now it has taken nearly 50 years, but NASA once again has ambitions to land the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024. The Artemis Program is a wide-reaching effort by numerous space agencies and led by NASA, with ambitions to not only put human feet on the lunar surface but to build a permanent base there, with a lunar space station in orbit around the Moon. To find out more, this week we speak to Dr Jacob Bleacher, Chief Exploration Scientist for human exploration at NASA, about how we are going to get there, what effect deep space will have on the astronauts, and why now is the time to go back to the Moon. Let us know what you think of the episode with a review or a comment wherever you listen to your podcasts. Subscribe to the Science Focus Podcast on these services: Acast, iTunes, Stitcher, RSS, Overcast Read the full transcription This podcast was supported by brilliant.org, helping people build quantitative skills in maths, science, and computer science with fun and challenging interactive explorations. Listen to more episodes of the Science Focus Podcast: Elisa Raffaella Ferrè: What happens to the brain in space? Everything You Wanted To Know About… Physics with Jim Al-Khalili Dr Erin Macdonald: Is there science in Star Trek? Kevin Fong: What happened to Apollo... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Right, our goal is to land our astronauts on the surface of the moon by 2024. And then we'll be following that. We expect with about a mission, a crude mission to the surface every year after that. So once a year. And slowly then what we'll do is build up the hardware, the infrastructure on the moon. So we'll be looking for and returning to the same place over and over. and each time we'll leave a little bit more there and we'll build on to it. And that will be the time when we can really look to partnerships to deliver more capability

that is built into that overall infrastructure and then support a more rigorous and larger exploration program on the surface of the moon. You're listening to the Science Focus podcast from the BBC Science Focus magazine team. With the UK's best-selling science and technology monthly, available in print and in several digital formats throughout the world. Find out more at ScienceFocus.com or look out for us in your app store. Hello, I'm Alexander McNamara, online editor at BBC Science Focus. In 1969, Apollo astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people ever to walk on the moon.

A feat that over the next three and a half years, only ten other space explorers would go on to achieve. Now, it has taken nearly 50 years, but NASA once again has ambitions to land the first woman and the next man on the moon by 2024. The Artemis Programme is a wide-reaching effort by numerous space agencies. agencies are led by NASA, with ambitions to not only put human feet on the lunar surface, but to build a permanent base there, as well as a lunar space station in orbit around the moon. To find out more, this week I speak to Dr. Jacob Bleacher, Chief Exploration Scientist for Human Exploration at NASA, about how we're going to get there, what effect deep space will have on the astronauts, and why now is the time to go back to the moon.

My name is Jacob Bleacher. I'm the Chief Exploration Scientists for Human Exploration at NASA, And my job is to work with a handful of other people and make sure that the architecture we're building, basically the plan and the hardware that we're building to explore space with human crews, is done in a way that can meet the types of science goals that we have. That can be from elsewhere in NASA, from our international partners, commercial partners. basically anyone that wants to use our human exploration system, our job is to make sure that we build a system that can meet those goals. So that's kind of what I do, and we're looking forward to exploring the moon.

So the moon, can you explain what the moon project is for us then? Sure. So right now we are working on the Artemis program, which is our program that will enable us to send the first woman and next man back to the lunar surface. We're looking at the South Pole of the Moon, and Artemis will be a group of programs that bring together a landing system, an orbiter around the moon, and other systems that we need to explore the surface of the Moon. So that's quite a lot of things to sort of combine all at one goes as getting to the Moon and staying there and working on there, essentially.

Right, that's right. And there are a lot of systems that we need to think about and understand what do they need to be able to do to work together to keep our crew safe, healthy, and enable them to explore the moon and collect the types of data that we're sending them there to get. So I guess the first thing to sort of understand is why are we going back to the moon now? Why do we need to land a woman and a man on the moon at this point, 50 years on from Apollo? Yeah, that's a great question. You use the phrase back to the moon.

I like to think of it as a continuation of going to the moon. We landed on the moon with our astronauts during the Apollo program. But those were short missions several days, and they explored different parts of the moon. And we learned some of the baseline data we need to understand how to explore the moon. Since then, we've sent some robotic explorers that have orbited the moon. And some countries have even sent landers to the moon. We're focusing now on sending humans to the surface so that we can begin to understand. how to live on the moon, live in deep space. And this is really a stepping stone for us to start

preparing to explore deep space and looking outward towards destinations like Mars. So the time is right now. We've learned what we needed to learn to be able to identify the right places to go. And we want to take advantage of the resources that are there so that we can not just go to put flags down and walk around and bring a few rocks back, but really have a presence on the lunar surface. So what sort of things are on the moon that we'd be able to make use of? So the moon we've learned over the last several decades is diverse in the types of materials that are there, and we might be able to take advantage of that. For instance, in the last decade or so, we've learned that there's actually more water on the surface of the moon than we had previously thought.

So in the South polar region and the North polar region, there are locations where we think there are deposits of volatile, And volatiles means materials that if they are heated up or warmed up, they become volatile or gas. So in the surface of the moon, water is one of those. But that water is trapped there on the surface of the moon in the poles because the moon, unlike the Earth, has an axis that's basically straight up and down. The Earth's axis is tilted. And that's what gives us our seasons as we go around the sun. But at the moon, because we don't have a tilted axis, the holes in the ground, craters, big holes that are created from collisions with rocks from outer space, those bottoms of those craters don't ever see the sunlight. So they're not exposed to the solar wind.

And so icees and water that can be trapped on the lunar surface and moved into those craters basically get stuck there. They're mixed in with the dirt, the regolith of the moon. and if that is true, if that material is there, as we believe it to be, that's a resource that we could potentially use. And this is the same kind of water that we have on Earth? That's right. Now, it might be mixed with some other things, and we need to learn about it. We need to learn what might be mixed with the water, how much of it is there, how easy it is

for us to get to it. These are all things that we need to learn that we really need to get on to the surface of the moon to collect data and learn about it. So that's one of the goals we have. Now, I mentioned the tilt of the moon, the axis being not tilted very much at all. The other aspect to that is when you have a low area in a hole or a crater where water and ice can be trapped, the opposite is true. On high topography, like the rims of the craters or mountain peaks, there are places where we think we have almost continuous daylight. So those locations are ideal for us to take advantage of because they can provide.

us with solar power. So there are some places we think that are fairly easily accessible that we could have daylight for 85% of the time on the lunar surface. And that's a, that's really the first resource we're going to go tap into to make sure we can power the systems we set down. So basically everything is there that you need. You've got water and you've got lights. You just need to be able to get people there. Yeah, right. It's like if you do a, a drive across country or, you know, to visit some folks far away. from you, right? You don't load up a whole bunch of gas cans on the back of your vehicle. You stop, right? You stop at a gas station. You stop somewhere and you have to fuel yourself up too, right? You might

buy a soft drink or an iced tea or something. We want to look at the moon as a place that we can go and live. It's not a place where we have to bring all of the resources with us. And that's a big step towards being able to stay there and have more of a permanent presence. I guess we need to be able to put people there to sort of test that. And is it something that we can't do with lunar rovers or, you know, robotics? Well, in fact, our astronaut explorers and our robotic explorers are going to do this hand in hand. It's really is a synergistic approach working together. So as we're building the systems right now that we'll be able to carry our astronauts to the surface,

We're also planning to send robotic landers and rovers to the surface to help collect some of that reconnaissance data that we need. We've had an orbiter in space, the lunar reconnaissance orbiter, that has collected images and other data that help us understand where the water might be and where the locations are that we want to land and traverse from. The rovers that we're going to send will help us understand where the ice might be, where it's most accessible. Some of the questions I mentioned a little bit earlier that are going to be collecting that type of data. We'll also send some landers that maybe they don't rove around, but they collect data at a specific site that helps us better understand the environment and the types of materials on the surface, the types of rocks that we're going to be encountering.

All of that is critical information that helps us build our safety. systems in an optimized manner to make sure that we can do the job we were asking our astronauts to do for us. And you say that job is the Artemis program. And so I guess essentially what you've done so far as you've done the reconnaissance and you've had a look and you know where to land and what resources will be there. What's the next step in that journey? Right. So the next step is really starting to understand how do we survive in deep space away from the Earth. If you have ambitious goals, as we do for going on to Mars or exploring elsewhere in the solar system, it's really difficult to take that big leap the whole way there.

The moon is a great proving ground for us. One, it's very scientifically valid. There's great data there that will help us understand not only the moon, but our Earth-moon system, what the Earth was experiencing through the time periods where life was gaining a foothold here. On Earth, we have an atmosphere and flowing water and plate tectonics, and those basically have erased much of the data that we have about the early Earth. But on the moon, because there is no atmosphere and there's not flowing water on the surface, we preserve all those bits of evidence. There's evidence about how the sun has evolved. There's evidence about the impact history that both the Earth and the moon experienced.

All of that data is there on the moon for us to go collect. to make those observations. And as we understand more about the science of the history of the moon and the history of the Earth, we learn more about how to survive in those harsh environments. So that's what we would refer to that as buying down the risk for trying to send people farther out into deep space. What is it like to actually live away from the Earth for long periods of time? We can learn that incrementally and prepare ourselves so that we're as effective as

as we can be when we go to farther away targets. So it's kind of like using going to the moon to conduct experiments, and in that time, that in itself is an experiment to push on further. That's right. Yep. It's a test ground for us to get ready for what we're going to be asking future generations. So does that differ to what we did in, you know, the previous generation of moon exploration?

when they went to the Apollo program, when they went to land on the moon, were they doing it purely to say that it could be done or were they doing research missions and scientific missions there too? It's a combination, just like it is today. Exploration and science go hand in hand. They're part of the same thing. I like to say that science is your toolbox for survival

when you're exploring, right? You learn about the environment that you're in. And so it was the same during the Apollo generation, as it is now in the Sardomis program. But they didn't have a program ahead of them that learned any of those lessons. So they were starting from scratch at that point. And so those landings were a tremendous advance

for humankind. And it took a tremendous amount of collaboration between the teams that worked on it. And they learned a lot about the moon. And since that time, we haven't sent people back, but as I mentioned earlier, we've sent other vehicles to the moon, orbitors and landers that have collected additional information.

So we're really standing on the shoulders of the generations ahead of us that learned that early information. It's because of that that we're in a position to be able to now take this next big leap to go to the moon and to stay there. And I guess you've learned from what they did 50 years ago to the current Artemis program. What are the main differences, you know, between getting to the moon then and getting to the moon and, as you say, staying there now?

Right. So there are some key differences in the architecture, the systems that we're building now. During the Apollo program, they launched and went to the moon. They went into orbit around the moon, and then they had a landing module that went down and it carried two astronauts, while the command module stayed in orbit with one astronaut. So we're looking at that system, and we have a system now that we're developing something called the gateway. So the gateway is going to stay in orbit around the moon, just like the command module did for Apollo, except that the gateway is basically going to be a reusable depot,

someplace that our astronauts and our systems can go to stay for short periods of time or long periods of time, and they can use the resources at the gateway. So it's not all on the system, the human landing system, or the vehicles that are carrying the crew to the gateway, the Orion spacecraft. They can dock there. They can take advantage of the power generated at the gateway. So it really becomes more like a depot that we can reuse as we prepare to then shuttle

crew members down to the lunar surface. So the gateway is a big difference for us. It's also a platform where we can conduct some of the research about surviving in deep space. So it'll be in an orbit that carries it up to 70,000 kilometers away from the, from the, lunar surface, so really far away. They really are out there in deep space. And that's the environment that astronauts will be flying through on their way to Mars in the future. So the gateway gives us a great place to interact with the lunar surface, as well as prepare for and collect the data for that trip to Mars. So it's kind of like a space station, similar to, I guess, in sort of the

way the International Base Station is around the Earth. It's one that's around the moon. that respect? So it's different than the space station in many ways. The space station is a much larger platform, and it's a research platform in lower orbit. It was a critical step for us to learn about spending longer periods of time and low gravity environments. And the ISS, the International Space Station, is a critical part for us to continue this learning process in preparation for going to the moon and Mars. So it's a part of that pathway. But the gateway will be a place where several different types of vehicles will be docking. The Orion I mentioned earlier is our crew capsule that will be launched on the space launch system. And that will carry us, our crew members, out to the gateway.

Meanwhile, a different vehicle, the human landing system, or HLS, will also launch and be connected with the gateway. So the crew can then spend some time in the gateway. They can also go into the human landing system and then ferry themselves down to the lunar surface and then back up. So, it is a location out in space, but it has some different tasks that we're assigning to it than the ISS has had to have. And you say it's in deep space as compared to the ISS. What sort of effect are you sort of anticipating that would have on the astronauts that are there as compared to the ones that are in low Earth orbit? Yeah, so out in deep space, they're not protected from the solar wind, the way that crew members are on the ISS inside the magnetic field of the earth. In that orbit, they will pass through that protective envelope at

some points in time, but they will also be exposed to that deep space environment. So now we can collect data with instruments out there and understand, you know, for instance, what happens when a solar event occurs. A lot of high energy comes out of the sun. It's coming towards us. We're almost certainly going to experience those type of events on our way to Mars. So we have to start to understand that risk and how do we deal with it? How do you build a safe place for the astronauts to go? How do you monitor those situations so that you're well prepared for that by the time that they get there?

We can also look, for instance, at aspects about the gateway. Are they experiencing the collection of potentially leaked gases from some of these vehicles? And do those gases stay around the gateway? Is it creating its own atmosphere or not? So there's a lot that we can learn there, as well as what is it like for the crew members to spend periods of time in orbit and then going down to the surface, either back to the Earth or down to the moon? So one thing we have to think about is the trip to Mars is several months. So the astronauts that take that first trip are going to spend several months in waitlessness, and then they're going to be asked to land on the surface of the moon and start doing jobs right.

away or maybe not. How long do they need to be prepared to be able to handle that? And we can start testing all of these things between the International Space Station and the gateway and going to the moon and coming back to the earth in this architecture that we're developing. I guess when you think of it like that, every step of the way has to be considered a lot more than you would think normal things in daily life, because obviously it's such a big mission going to the moon, going beyond to the moon. I was going to say how on earth, but obviously you're all on earth, but it's for space, but how on earth do you sort of like make sure you capture as much as you can?

Is that the reason that you're doing this? Yeah, that's exactly right. And that's why I say, you know, when we look at Apollo and Artemis, you know, this is all part of the same path. This is the same path of exploration. And you incrementally learn how to operate in these environments. And, you know, it's hard. hard to take big leaps, but you want to test as much as you can and model and collect data about

the environments. We've been sending vehicles to Mars to understand what that environment is like. That helps us prepare for going there. As I mentioned, we've sent numerous spacecraft to the moon to collect data and make sure we know where the best spots for us to go are. These are all part of that pathway. And so, you know, sometimes you look at some of the things we do and you'll see, you know, videos of something blowing up or, you know, quote unquote, not being successful, right? But really, you're learning, right? You're learning how you want to build those systems so that that doesn't happen. And those are, you know, tough lessons to learn, but that's how we advance. I mean, I guess there's a lot of people. So, you know, it's in the news all the time.

And there are lots of, it's not just, you know, the major space agencies, the national space agencies that are launching ships into space and doing that. There's a lot more commercial enterprises now that are also launching satellites and that sort of thing. How much of a role do they have to play in the Artemis program? Yeah, that's a great point. So the Artemis program, for us, we're going to the moon and we want to start to establish some of the infrastructure that we need that will help us, then continue to build on that exploration through partnership with our commercial entities here in the United States, as well as our international partnerships with other space agencies. So this really

is an endeavor that's going to include humankind. NASA's kind of leading the way here, but we're going to look to those partnerships to be a critical place for this. And that's why I said, you asked me to introduce myself at the beginning. My job, you know, I work as a scientist in human exploration, And my job is to be able to look out to scientists and other folks who want to send things to the moon. There are things they want to do. There are goals that they have. And so we want to be able to develop that plan in a way that enables them to do those things. So what sort of things would they be looking at?

So I can understand on a purely science perspective, it'd be like, okay, we need to go find the geology of the moon, find that there's water there and have that space station there. But what would these commercial interests be? what would they be looking to get out of having people there on the surface of the moon? Sure. That's one of the things that really creates innovation. We don't necessarily try to dictate why folks would want to go to the moon or what they'd want to do. Oftentimes, exploration is motivated just because humans want to explore. We want to know what's out there.

And that may involve tourism. That may involve actually bringing material back or character. characterizing things there. The companies and agencies that are the ones that can show they can do these jobs. I mean, the technology that you have to come up with to do this is impressive. And so, you know, that's just, you know, imagine you've seen pictures of NASA spacecraft doing things, right? That's the reason we have the emblem, right? We're doing this. Look what we're doing.

Just think about any corporation that would potentially want to have their name showing that they can do that as well. And so, you know, we don't really see the vision of what the, what, we don't try to limit what the vision might be for those innovators who are going to contribute. What we do know is that everyone seems to be excited and wants to be a part of it. And so we're trying to make sure that, you know, we use the history of NASA and the strengths that we have and that we also partner with as many as we can to make sure we're looking at that, or tapping into that full breadth of innovation that is brought by partners. I guess that that sort of, it feels like now is a good time for this mission to happen as well,

because you sort of see the technology and the desire to do it there. Is that, was that factored in or is it just, you know, now is the time to do it because we can do it. You know, it's the path, right? I think it's kind of everything that you just said. We've been on a path. And for the last, you know, 20 years now, we're just about 20 years of having the International Space Station staff continuously. We've learned a lot from that low Earth orbit.

And you may have seen recently that us, the company SpaceX delivered some crew members to the International Space Station. So we're really looking at a transition to where our corporations, our companies are now taking part in getting cargo and crew up to low Earth orbit. And so the commercial sector is taking a bigger and bigger role in lower Earth orbit, which enables us, our space agency, to begin looking beyond that. So we continue to try to push the edge of where we're sending astronauts, and we partner and they come along with us. So I think, you know, it's a combination of everything you said. This is the right time to do it because we can do it. And the partnerships we have are helping us to realize that. So just on touching on one thing that you said there, which was talking about the astronauts themselves.

Now obviously, taking people to the moon is quite an extraordinary thing to do. You know, we've only, there's only been a handful of people in human existence that have ever been there. What's, you know, what is the generation of people that are coming that are going to be the ones landing on the moon? What, you know, is there a mindset that they have to have that's different because it is obviously such a long way away. And then the idea is that it will take you even further to Mars. Yeah, you know, I think it goes back to that point that, you know, humankind is inherently focused to explore. Humans have always asked, you know, what's over the mountain?

What's on the other side of the river, right? And, you know, what's on the moon? And we've gone there just enough to tease ourselves, you know, we've gotten just a little bit of the tip of the iceberg, but we know there's so much more to be learned there. And there's so much more to be discovered. And again, that is a stepping stone for us to understand the history of the solar system, collect information about understanding our place in the universe. And that's kind of the springboard to help propel us out to other places like Mars.

So, you know, I think this generation that's, you know, going to be coming up. And my hope is that we'll put ourselves in a position where they see that as the normal, right? This is what we do. And they're going to be ready to grasp that and go forward. So I guess it must be happening quite soon then to sort of catch on to that momentum. When do you expect these sort of things to happen when we have a base on the moon and people landing? Right. Our goal is to land our astronauts on the surface of the moon by 2024.

And then we'll be following that. We expect with about a mission, a crude mission to the surface every year after. that. So once a year. And slowly then what we'll do is build up the hardware, the infrastructure on the moon. So we'll be looking for and returning to the same place over and over. And each time we'll leave a little bit more there and we'll build on to it. And that will be the time when we can really look to partnerships to deliver more capability that is built into that overall infrastructure and then support a more rigorous and larger exploration program on the surface of the moon. So if you use the analogy earlier of driving in a car and you know you don't have your

gas in the back of the car and you have that. Obviously you still need to get stuff there. And so it sounds like if you're going to build a moon base, that's quite a lot of things to take from Earth to the orbiter and then subsequently down to the moon. How are you doing that? because, you know, the moon is a long way away. You need a big spaceship, surely. Yep, yep. So we're looking at, you know, the first people to go to the South Pole of the Moon. You know, it's not going to be the full-size Winnebago with everything that you can imagine having, right?

It's going to be a mission that, you know, if you think about Apollo, you see the videos and the pictures of the astronauts, you know, That wasn't a luxurious huge space they were in. But it's what you have. It's what you have available to get you there. So the first mission is certainly going to have the least amount of capability, but then as we'll continue to build it up and they'll get more and more. There may be bigger rovers. There may be habitats that the astronauts can land and then go to as opposed to staying in their lander.

So initially, the first landings, they'll stay with the vehicle that they landed in. They'll explore around there, and then they'll build up that capability after that. So that's kind of how that will work. And so that's part of what we're discussing now is what do we actually need just to get there, and then what is it that we'd like to be able to do after that? And so how do we get the elements there that make that plan a reality? Maybe we have to send some robotic landers as well that carry some additional hardware that the astronauts could leave and go get or something like that.

So those are the types of conversations that we're having now to try and build that plan that you're asking about. So it seems like it's building up to actually having quite a substantial spot on the moon. And 2024 is, what, four years away. It's quite a short time. I imagine there's going to be a ramping up of excitement about this, which is why I think it's great that we're talking now about it, because obviously it's going to be a big thing.

But, you know, I'm thinking about people like me, and I'm seeing this incredible thing happening. You say you build a base there, and then presumably at some point further off into Mars as well, do you see in, well, I don't know, in our lifetime, the ability for people to be able to go to the moon for whatever reason? You say there's a lot more commercial reasons. You know, you can't ask why they're doing it and that sort of thing.

But could a person like me ever land on the moon at some point in the... not too distant future. Well, to me, that's what's exciting about this, is that you're even asking that question, right? You know, at no point in human history has that really been a viable question, maybe right around the time that Apollo was happening, but then year after year of not going back,

you know, that's not really something that we were thinking about five years ago. So the fact that we can even ask that question right now is just wonderful to me. You know, we're on a good, path here. And I can't tell what's going to happen in the future, but that's the plan that we have is working towards being able to extend, you know, humankind beyond the surface of the Earth. We've done it with airplanes. We've done it with ships, right? And now we're talking about it in

low Earth orbit. And the moon is right out there. It's still far away, but it's not as far away is Mars. And that's what we're really talking about. I mentioned earlier that as we, you know, we get a stronger commercial participation as we move farther away from the earth. That enables us to kind of push the envelope, getting astronauts back to the moon. And then eventually we'll be looking out towards Mars. The hope is that we bring humankind with us behind and that they can hopefully realize, you know, the kind of question that you're asking right now. So to me, it's wonderful that you even asked me that question. Well, that's what I'm here for.

So that's great. I guess there's just one thing which I'd just love to ask you, which is, would you go to the moon if you had the chance? Well, I'll tell you what. If they said, hey, we need you to go to the moon, I'd go. I would go. I can't imagine anything more exciting than that. I've talked to a few of the people that have been there before, and, you know, it's,

I can only imagine. I can only imagine it. That was NASA Chief Exploration Scientist Dr Jacob Bleacher on the Artemis program. You can find out more about human adventures into space at ScienceFocus.com and pick up the latest issue of BBC Science Focus magazine for more amazing science and tech. This month, we're hoping to put a smile on your face with a feel-good issue. Expect happiness through dogs, stress-busting swimming tips, and the secrets of a rollercoaster designer.

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