Science Friday - Protesters ‘Stand Up For Science’ At Rallies Nationwide | Blue Ghost Lunar Lander

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Scientists aren’t always encouraged to be politically active. But recent political interference by the Trump administration has many fired up. And, the Blue Ghost lunar lander, part of NASA’s CLPS initiative, completed the first fully successful commercial moon landing.Protesters ‘Stand Up For Science’ At Rallies Across The CountryScientists and defenders of science are gathering in cities across the U.S. today as part of Stand Up for Science rallies, events to protest recent political interference by the Trump administration in science funding. The main rally in Washington, D.C. features speakers including Bill Nye, Dr. Frances Collins and Dr. Atul Gawande, and will advocate for ending censorship, expanding scientific funding, and defending diversity, equity, and inclusion.Host Flora Lichtman speaks to science reporter Anil Oza, a Sharon Begley Fellow at STAT and MIT, about the runup to Stand Up For Science, and what he’s heard from organizers and attendees. Then, Flora speaks with two listeners, D.C.-based planetary scientist Mike Wong and University of Louisville student Emily Reed, about why they’re fired up to attend local rallies. Touchdown For The Blue Ghost Lunar LanderLast weekend, the Blue Ghost lander, built by the Texas-based company Firefly Aerospace, became the first commercial spacecraft to execute a fully successful landing on the surface of the moon. On board the lander were 10 NASA instruments flown as part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. The lander will be in operation on the moon over the course of one lunar day (about 2 Earth weeks), before running out of battery power as the lunar night falls.Kevin Scholtes, an engineer at Firefly Aerospace, and Dr. Nicky Fox, associate administrator for the NASA Science Mission Directorate, join Host Flora Lichtman to talk about building a commercial spacecraft, the role of private companies in spaceflight, and some of the science the mission aims to achieve.Transcripts for each segment will be available after the show airs on sciencefriday.com. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

This is Science Friday. I'm Flora Lichten. Today, scientists and concerned citizens are taking to the streets in cities across the U.S. to protest the Trump administration's science policies. Joining me to Philison on the Stand Up for Science rallies is Anil Oza, reporter for Statt and MIT based in Boston, Massachusetts. Welcome back, Inil. Hey, Flora, good to be back. Tell us about Stand Up for Science. What is this rally all about? Yeah, this is a rally put on by a handful of scientists to sort of support science. It has a very vague goal, but it is to protest a lot of the movements that the Trump administration has made to attack the scientific process and the institutions of science. And where are the events? So these events are going to take place across the country and actually across the globe, but there are 32 official protests that are affiliated that are mostly in state capitals and the biggest one is in Washington, D.C.

but there'll be a lot of large ones in cities that are very popular sort of university or research town. So I'm in Boston. That is slated to be a pretty big one. New York City is also slated to be pretty large as is Seattle and L.A. Are the big science orgs standing up for the stand-up for science march? No, they are. And I think that's one of the key differences between this march and the science march that happened during Trump's first term, which is the March for Science. In 2017, almost every major scientific society that you could think of formally endorse.

the march for science. But we're not seeing that this time. And I think it speaks to the sort of weird moment we are in politically where scientists are very upset and stressed about the future of the scientific enterprise here in the U.S. But there's also a lot of fear, particularly at the top, to speak out against the Trump administration and to further target themselves. Even at these big science works. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, like a notable exception here is that the AAAS, which is the Association for the Advancement of Science, which was a major player in the March for Science in 2017 has not endorsed this march at all. What came of that one? What's different about this one? Yeah, so I think taking a step back,

we're in a very similar moment to 2017. There is a lot of pressure on scientists. They feel like they're under attack. Trump is having the sort of same rhetorical attack on scientific institutions, on universities. There's threats to funding. He's putting appointees that eschew the scientific consensus. And so in 2017, scientists, right, as Trump first took office, sort of said, enough is enough, we need to take to the streets. And so they planned this march for Earth Day in 2017. They had, by their own estimates, about a million people in 650 marches on every continent across the globe. It was this really watershed moment because scientists don't really like to engage in political activities. And after that march, which was huge, they formed this

nonprofit, which was around for a couple of years. They were around into the next election cycle in 2020, but they definitely had diminished influence. They didn't really know how to run a nonprofit. There was definitely clashing ideas of what they should be focused on. And so they kind of petered out. I'm hearing drama. Absolutely, which is very common in activist groups and in nonprofits. But I think it was disappointing to a lot of people that went out in 2017 and wanted to see this movement sustained. And while the organization, marcher science did not last, I think its effects can be seen in the fact that it did seed a generation of scientists that are activists, and it did change this ethos of political engagement

and science communication among scientists. Wait, say more about that. Yeah, so historically, scientists don't love to engage in politics. There's this image of a scientist in their lab, completely separated from the rest of the world. And scientists would go back and forth about this all time about whether they should engage in politics directly. And 2017 kind of shut the door on that. It said that, yes, we need to be out in the streets. We need to be engaged. Otherwise, there will be attacks on science. And so that really fundamentally changed this conversation. And obviously, scientific activists would argue for the better, that it enabled scientists to go out into the streets. And I think an event like the one that we are about to see today would not even be thinkable

if it was not for the marcher science in 2017. Anything you'll be keeping your eye on? As you cover this today? Yeah, absolutely. I think the first thing is just crowd size. I think it'll be really interesting to see how many people show up. Like I said, we are in a moment where the temperature is very high, where scientists are losing jobs, or losing funding. They are very upset.

And I'll be keeping an eye to see if that does translate to crowd size. We are obviously today's a Friday. So we may not get as many sort of casual people that just support science out in the streets. But then going forward, I want to see if it does. does nudge these bigger players to step into the field. This is being put on by mostly early career researchers. So I think the real thing to keep an eye on is going forward to universities, scientific societies, university presidents, these big-wig scientists, and eventually politicians step into the fray to also defend science to sort of buy into some of the notions of this march

and, you know, really step against the Trump administration in its funding cuts and all these other attacks on the scientific process that they've enacted over the past about a month and a half. Thanks for joining us today, Anil. Absolutely. A pleasure to be here. Anil Oza, reporter for Statt and MIT based in Boston, Massachusetts. We put out a call to listeners to find out whether you were going to the march, and we got a huge response. So we've got two young scientists on the line to tell us why their Bunsen burners are on 11 for this, and why they feel like they have to be there.

Mike Wong is a planetary scientist and astrobiologist marching in Washington, D.C. And Emily Reed studies environmental sustainability at the University of Louisville. She is attending the rally in her hometown of Frankfurt, Kentucky. Thank you for joining us. Happy to be here. Yeah, this is a real honor. Well, we are happy to have you. Why did you feel like you needed to be at this rally?

Mike, let's start with you. Yeah, I am an early career scientist whose salary, comes completely from federal funding. And with the sudden cuts to federal funding for science and the fact that it seems like the entire scientific infrastructure in the United States is crumbling all around us, I felt that it was really necessary as a practicing scientist and as somebody who helps mentor up-and-coming scientists that we need to speak out. Emily, are the changes that are happening in science right now, the changes to funding making you rethink going into science?

A lot of people in my school and in my generation are very worried about what their futures are going to look like. That doesn't mean that they are shaken in trying to strive for that world, but it does mean that we are anxious and just kind of, yeah, we're worried and stressed out. Wait, tell me more about that stress. unpack it for me. We're worried about the industries we're going to go into. We are worried about the budget cuts that are currently happening and how that is going to affect not just us personally, but also the world at large with the NIH funding that is getting halted or delayed with the delays in grants that are being given out across college sectors that is going to slow down research or even stop research in certain areas with a certain censoring that's happening. People aren't

going to be able to ask the questions and do the research that they want to do to make the world a better place. So not only are by generation very worried about their jobs on the personal level in the future, but also just what the world in the future is going to be like versus the world that we grew up in or that we thought we were going to get. Mike, what about you? Do you feel this stress? Absolutely. And it's honestly so heartbreaking to hear that stress pervade all the way down to, you know, Emily's generation as well. You know, it just feels like doors are shutting right in our faces and the opportunities are dissipating, evaporating right in front of our eyes. And Emily's absolutely right. Science is both a personal endeavor in terms of trying to, you know, get a career in science

as an individual. But the ramifications extend all the way up to the planetary scale. Does it make you rethink your path in science? I love coming to work every single day, and I can't imagine doing anything else. But it makes me hesitate about, you know, what's going to come down the road in a year and two years. As a postdoc, I'm still seeking a permanent position, a job like a tenure-to-track faculty position, or as a civil servant working for NASA, for instance. And it just seems like those avenues are dwindling, and I'm not sure what the future holds, and I'm very anxious about it. You know, one thing is. One thing is, you know, one that really strikes me about this is that I don't know that taking to the streets is the natural

state for many scientists. And, you know, in covering science for decades, I've heard from many scientists that you can actually be penalized for speaking out, for being a public figure. Does it feel significant to you that you're seeing this swell of interest from scientists to sort of get out there and raise their voice? I think you're absolutely right, Flora. We scientists, we like to stay in our labs, do as much research as possible, you know, uncover the mysteries of the universe. And so this feeling that we need to be galvanized as a community to go and march in state capitals around the country and in Washington, D.C. really does speak to, I think, the dire nature of the situation. Before we let you go, what's on your poster boards?

Great question. through today with one of my favorite quotes from Mr. Spock. It says, insufficient facts always invite danger from the Star Trek original series episode Space Seed. The reason why I chose that quote is because I want to stand up for evidence-based policymaking. We need facts to guide the way that we act in the world, both for human health, for environmental justice, for everything. because without facts, we're really just in the dark with regard to what the consequences of our actions are. And so I think science really gives us a way to move forward and build that prosperous future that I think we all want to see. And if we cut off science funding, it'll be very hard to accomplish that.

Emily, first off, you are so cool. Oh, thanks. My poster board says research equals investment with the whole idea that, a lot of this stuff is happening because it's not efficient somehow. I wanted to do something against that and say that it is an investment for the future. You need to put aside some amount of resources for investing, for research, for science, so that in the future, things can be even better or more efficient. Thank you both.

Thanks, Laura. Thank you. Mike Wong, planetary scientist based in Washington, D.C., and Emily Reed, student at the University of Louisville, based in Kentucky. Before we wrap, let's check in with a listener at the D.C. rally to hear what the scene is like. Samantha is a computational genomics researcher based in Baltimore. Hello. Hey, Samantha. Hi, good to hear from you.

Who's speaking? What's happening right now? Mrs. Collins is currently speaking. I guess, former, no, former director of the NIH. Are people riled up? What's what's Francis saying? He was talking about the Gettysburg Address on the Lincoln Memorial and how it's, you know, of the people, by the people and for the people. And how that's really science, too. It's of the people by the people and foreign people. And we are the people. Does it feel like a big crowd there? Oh, yeah. I would say it's a decent size crowd, given that this is the middle of the workday. I mean, I'm sure it helps that it's a beautiful day in D.C. right now. What's the crowd like? What's the nerdiness level? Pretty high. There are lots of signs that are nerdy, you know, with references to statistics and science and citing facts and numbers.

That's kind of a sort of thing that you see at a science rally versus a different protest. Have you seen anyone cool? What's been the best speaker so far? Francis Collins is pretty good. There was also just before him, there was a young woman who was one of the first recipients of CAR-T cell therapy that treated her childhood cancer. There's a guy here dressed up as the Muppet, I don't know, Bunsen or Beaker, but the one Beaker. Beaker. Yes. What's the vibe like? Are people fired up? Yeah, I think people are understandably upset about all that's been going on in the federal government. It definitely

doesn't feel defeatist. I mean, there's a big tear right now. Alfred's cold the singing. Okay, we'll let you go and enjoy those dulcet tones. Thank you so much. Samantha is a computational genomics researcher based in Baltimore. After the break, what does it take to build your own moon lander? Taking this on seems like its own, forgive the strain metaphor, but moonshot for our company. And then once we got into it, we suddenly realized, holy cow, this is actually something we can pull off. This might actually be something that we can keep building on. Stick around.

Last week, a robotic lander touched down on the surface of the moon. a blue ghost. It's carrying a bunch of NASA science experiments, but the lander itself wasn't built by NASA or any other space agency. It was built by Firefly Aerospace, a company based in Texas. It's the first commercially built spacecraft to successfully land on the moon. Joining me now to talk about the mission, how it got there, and what it'll be doing on the moon are my guests. Kevin Schultes is the Future Systems Architect for Firefly Aerospace in Texas, and Dr. Nikki Fox is the Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, which is wrangling 10 experiments on board the Slander.

Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Kevin, let's start with you. How did this project begin? Did it feel audacious to say, oh, yeah, we can go to the moon? Yeah, absolutely. It was definitely an audacious kind of undertaking.

When we started this project off, we hadn't yet launched our first alpha launch vehicle. and taking this on seemed like its own, you know, forgive the strayed metaphor, but moonshot for our company. And then once we got into it, we suddenly realized, you know, holy cow, this is actually something we can pull off. This might actually be something that we can keep building on and taking further. And it's been just a surprise every step of the way. What was the biggest challenge? Like, what was the thing that kept people up at night? Oh, that changed.

I think that changed daily. You know, early on, we started this project close to the beginning of COVID. So, you know, think of the kind of office environment that you have to be in in order to work on a lunar lander with other people. And all of a sudden, everyone's having to work remote. And it's, you know, that's a huge challenge early on. And then, honestly, you know, war in Ukraine limited some of our supply chain choices. And we had to pivot on that as well. And then I think just, you know, you look at the history of landing on the moon or landing on any planetary body.

And it should stop you in your tracks to think. think about what it is you're about to attempt, consider how few attempts are successful. So every day, every test campaign, it was a constant focus. You know, how is our propulsion going to perform? How is our vision navigation going to perform? You know, what are the things we haven't thought of? A couple months before we launched, our chief engineer went around the office and gave everyone a hypothetical, you know, it's two months after our mission.

We were a terrible failure. Tell me why. you know, just to get the juices kind of going and saying, what's the last thing that we didn't think of yet? Nikki, there's a bunch of NASA science on this Lander. Tell me about some of the experiments. Oh, yeah, we're really excited. We actually have 10 instruments on the Lander, all working beautifully. I could talk about all of them, obviously, but maybe if I sort of group them, you know,

this one's really looking at the characteristics of the regalith, so of the surface of the moon. On the way down, we had an instrument called scalps that is actually looking at how the rocket plume as the lander was descending, how it sort of interrupts and interferes with the regolith and how the regaliths sort of responds. So we're looking at how the dust is kicked up as the lander comes down so that we can sort of see how, if you had sensitive equipment and you were bringing another lander down, what is that kind of keep out zone that we would need to do? and that helps us model as we start to think about larger and larger landers. We also have an instrument that is looking at kind of how sticky the regolith is.

So once it's kicked up and it lands, how hard is it to actually move it? How much does it adhere to surfaces? And then we have an electrodynamic dust shield instrument, which is kind of it's going to be putting like an electric current through some of the materials to see if you can actually kind of shake off that regalids. So that's like sort of a nice grouping of three of them that are really characterizing the lunar surface for us. So a lot of interest in the dust is what I'm hearing. Yes. I mean, we learned from the Apollo mission just how tacky that regolith was.

You know, it stuck to everything. It's stuck to the spacesuits, to the boots, to everything. And it, you know, it does get into your lungs and can cause some health issues. So we really want to make sure that we are protecting our future astronauts as they return to the moon with the Artemis program. How do you make the call, Nikki, for which instruments you're going to send on which lander? That is a really great question. So most of the time we make it by the actual destination of the lander. So this particular one going to Merr Chrysium, which was an area that was formed by an asteroid impact. And so it sort of flooded the basin with basaltic lava, which is kind of a very dark lava, which is actually commonly found here on Earth. And so because we were going there, we sort of planned the instruments that makes sense to go to that that location.

We do have some instruments that are kind of destination agnostic. They'll do great science wherever they go. So they can sort of take advantage of any of them. But a lot of them are just selected because it is the best place for them to go. Nikki, talk me through the advantages, disadvantages of using commercial flight versus something in-house. Well, actually, there's a couple of reasons. So one is, you know, the main goal of the Clips program is to actually create a sustainable lunar economy. And, you know, we want to do that by really incentivizing and supporting American companies to be able to do these daring, amazing things.

So we have companies often that haven't done any sort of real space work before. So it's really exciting for us. I mean, we want to be able to focus on the science. We want to be able to put more instruments on the surface of the moon. more instruments into space for less money. And so honestly, we want to end up just paying for this as a delivery service, just as you would ship a package. We want to ship packages up to the moon on a very regular basis.

Moon PS. Yes, absolutely. So it's incentivizing and stimulating the American companies to be able to do this for us and also to just do it in a more efficient and economical way. Kevin, are you designing the spacecraft around the size? The way the spacecraft is designed, it's mostly around the spacecraft itself, because, you know, as Nicky was mentioning, you know, we're trying to build a service. And the eventual goal, I mean, we're still, we're still iterations away from this. The eventual goal is to get to the point where you can have that if it fits a chips kind of approach with payloads, where we're able to incorporate them on a fairly standard kind of spacecraft.

And as a commercial entity, you know, our big, our big push is to make the, spacecraft as repeatable in its build as possible. You know, there's huge cross savings in that. There's huge engineering savings. You know, if we can prove that the system works, you know, why, why customize it, you know, more than we need to each time around? So there's, there's quite a bit of it that's sort of standardized around the idea of, like, I'm building a lander.

What do I need a lander to do? And then there is some customization that we have to provide for the individual payloads based on their unique sensitivities. So what we're learning about, you know, as we take on this kind of great. experiment of commercial payload services is there are certain kinds of interfaces that are kind of hard to standardize when it comes to things like, you know, electromagnetic interference or mounting locations. You know, some payloads want to be on top of the lander looking back at Earth. Some payloads want to be underneath the lander, getting dirty with the regolith as the engines

are firing. And it's kind of hard to anticipate and standardize that. So there's a fair amount of customization that happens. But it's nowhere near to the extent. that you might expect for a Mars lander mission, for example, where really the science comes first and every engineering decision has to trace back to the science investigation. I want to talk a little bit more about your business model. I mean, who do you imagine are your customers? You know, that's a great question. I use the term great experiment, and that's kind of where we're going into this with,

is that as we look out at the market for what could happen at the moon, there's a whole slew of possibilities. And it's a real challenge to predict the future. I mean, it's the one thing that you can guarantee about predicting the future is that you'll be wrong. Yeah. But there's promise in terms of some materials resources on the moon. There's promise in the world of things like helium-3 and its use in refrigerants for quantum computing, and it's used for profusion.

There's promise in the science activity and being ancillary logistical support for a sustained permanent human presence on the moon. I mean, those pesky humans, they need food, they need water, they need things to read. We're so needy. Yeah.

The logistics supply chain itself is kind of a huge potential market if we're going to have a continuous presence there. But then there's all sorts of unknowns as well. And as an analogy in this, I think back in the 60s and 70s, when we were first putting satellite constellations around the earth, the idea of using a satellite to broadcast TV was considered so niche and esoteric. Like, why would you ever do that? Who except the most wealthiest of people would ever do something like that? And then lo and behold, you know, the 80s and 90s, that is the largest business for satellites. And it was completely unexpected.

So part of, part of this is getting out there, figuring out what's real, what it isn't, figuring out what kind of customers might come along that we weren't even thinking of before. And then pivoting from there. And along the way from a commercial, you know, business standpoint, you know, it's a, it's an incredible, diversification for us in that regardless of what kind of economy emerges at the moon, we're building out capabilities that are applicable across the solar system. Is there a target cost you're going for? Like, oh, we'll ship whatever you want to the moon for for 1995 a pound. I mean, the goal for commercial competition is always, you know,

finding the lower cost. So a lot of our, a lot of our costing is competitive in nature and we're we're driving for the best value for NASA. That's really the major goal there. I don't know that I'd be able to give you a specific range that we're at right now, but the goal is always lower. Nikki, it seems like a really busy time for moon science. Thursday, another private lander called Athena made it to the moon but was on its side and the mission ended after its batteries ran out.

Last week, another moon-oriented mission launched, the lunar trailblazer, which is an orbiter. it's had some communications problems after launch. What's going on with that now? Yes, we definitely have had some communication problems. We're using as many resources as we can to kind of image the spacecraft and figure out it's kind of tumbling right now. And so hoping that it will reorient itself so that it's in the right configuration and

we can actually establish communications with it and send some commands. The team is fantastic. Believe me, if anyone can bring back the spacecraft, it's the Lunar Trail Blazer team. So just wishing them lots and lots of luck in trying to recover this beautiful little mission. Nikki, when will we start seeing science roll in from Blue Ghost? It is already rolling in. My goodness, Blue Ghost didn't waste any time.

They were taking data, as Kevin noted, some of our instruments wanting to get dirty to actually be able to, image those plumes. So a lot of the instruments were on during the landing even. And then as soon as possible, you know, we've been turning on instruments. Some of them have already achieved all of their science goals. Obviously, we're going to keep going to get bonus science, you know, just trying to get more science for our money, as always. But yeah, we're already seeing science rolling in and beautiful images. And if you have not yet seen the unbelievable sun, lunar sunrise image from Blue Ghost, then please go look for it because it is stunning.

I love that. Thank you to you both for joining me today. Absolutely. Thank you for having us. Thanks. Kevin Schultes is the future systems architect for firefly aerospace in Texas, and Dr. Nikki Fox is the Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. And you can see that lunar sunrise picture Nikki mentioned at ScienceFriday.com slash lunar. And that is about all we have time for. Lots of folks helped make the show happen, including George Harper, John Denkoski, Annie Niro, Jason Rosenberg, Ross Shardreedy. I'm Flora Lichtman. Thanks for listening.