Short Wave - Artemis: NASA's New Chapter In Space

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Humans haven't set foot on the moon in 50 years, but NASA hopes to take one step closer with the launch of a new rocket and space capsule on Monday. Today, science correspondent Nell Greenfieldboyce joins Scientist in Residence Regina G. Barber to talk about what NASA hopes to learn from this test flight and why it might be difficult to justify the program's cost.Planning to tune in for Monday's launch? Email us at [e-mail] pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

You're listening to Shortwave. From NPR. Hey, short wavers, Regina Barbara here. And if you were born any time in the last half century, like me, then in your lifetime, no one has walked on the moon. 10, 9, 8, 7, ignition sequence started. All engines are started. It was just after midnight on December 7, 1972,

when NASA launched Apollo 17, the last mission to bring astronauts to, to the lunar surface. We have a lift off and it's lighting up the areas. It's just like daylight here at Kennedy Space Center. The Saturn 5 is moving off the pad. Today, NASA has a new moon rocket and crew capsule waiting on a launch pad in Florida. It's 32 stories tall, more powerful than the famous Saturn 5 moon rocket. And its first test flight is scheduled for Monday morning.

I won't be there, but science correspondent Nell Greenfield-Boyce is going to see this rocket launch. Hey, Nell. Hey, Regina. I hope I see it launch. I hope it goes as scheduled. Me too, me too. But this test flight is a huge deal for NASA, right? Yeah, they've been working on this for over a decade. And if all goes as planned, this rocket will send a crew capsule on a long, looping mission around the moon and back to Earth. But this time, there's no astronauts on board. No, no, this time they're just testing out the spacecraft. But the goal is to use this vehicle to get people back to the moon in just a few years. So NASA calls this its Artemis program. And I just found out that Artemis is actually the twin sister of Apollo. And speaking of women, NASA has promised to put a woman on the moon this time.

Yeah, that's what they said. And the first person of color, they say. Yeah. And I wonder if this is like a double dipping thing. Is it one person who's a woman of color? I mean, I have complicated feelings about this like as a woman of color. Yeah. I mean, NASA just hasn't said.

They won't announce this for a while. You know, the touchdown on the lunar surface isn't supposed to happen until 2025 at the earliest. I mean, you know, there could be delays. And sadly, there's pretty much always delays. You know it. You know it. Still, NASA looks good to go for this test flight. And if they can't fly Monday for some reason, there's another chance later that week. So today on the show, what NASA hopes to learn from this trip to the moon,

and why some people question whether NASA should really be building this moon program around this giant rocket. I'm Regina Barber. I'm Nell Greenfield Boyce. And you're listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR. Okay, now, tell us some more about this rocket and capsule. If I was going to the launch pad with you to take a look, which I wish I could, what would I see? Well, in some ways, it looks like the old space shuttles. Do you remember those?

Of course. That was the spaceship of my childhood. Me too, right? So there's this big, fat orange fuel tank, and then you've got these solid rocket boosters on each side. only this time, instead of an airplane-shaped space shuttle sitting on top, this rocket has like a bell-shaped capsule perched on the tippy top. So like the crew capsule looks more like the capsule from like the days of Apollo. Exactly, yeah.

And when it comes home, it'll splash down in the Pacific, just like the Apollo capsules splash down in the ocean. And you said NASA's been working on this for more than a decade. Yeah. So remember, the space shuttles, our beloved space shuttles, we're retired in 2011. Do you remember that? I do. I definitely do.

They'd been flying for 30 years. So it was time to do something new. I mean, NASA wanted to take some routine kinds of spaceflight that the shuttle had been doing and turn that over to the commercial spaceflight industry. The thinking was that, you know, companies could do it more cheaply than NASA could. And that whole plan has actually worked out pretty well for flights to the International Space Station. Right. The private company, SpaceX, has been doing this for a couple years now, right? sending folks into space, ferrying NASA astronauts to the space station. Yeah, NASA just buys rides from SpaceX. It's like a space taxi service. But going to the moon was going to be NASA's thing, right?

That was the idea. So back when the shuttle's retired, Congress told NASA to build a giant heavy lift rocket that would be designed for human exploration of deep space. So like, you know, the moon and beyond. And they told the agency to use as much of a rocket. of the space shuttle technology is possible. And the idea was to kind of preserve contracts and jobs. It was a political thing. You know, you're talking about jobs related to the space shuttle that would have otherwise just gone away. So that's why this resulting rocket kind of looks like the shuttle without the shuttle.

Yeah. So it uses shuttle parts like the solid rocket motors and engines. I was talking to Charlie Bolden. He's a former astronaut who was running NASA back then. and he told me he had no idea it would take so long to build this thing. It's just taking much, much, much longer than I ever anticipated for a system that is somewhat complex, but it's, you know, it's not like we're building something totally new. He thought it would fly in like 2018.

And here we are in 2022, and it's finally ready. How close will the capsule get to the moon on this first flight? So it'll be orbiting the moon, right, going around and around. and the closest it will ever get to the surface is about 60 miles away. And you can be sure NASA is going to be beaming back all kinds of images of the craters and the earth from the moon. I mean, there's going to be a huge sort of onslaught of publicity. This rocket has all kinds of sensors built into it so that engineers can see how it withstands the stresses of launch. There's also mannequins inside the capsule, and they've got sensors all over them too.

Manichens? Like how many? Well, there's one in the commander's seat. MUNiken Campos, named after an engineer who played an important part in the rescue of the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission. I love it. And then there's two female mannequins named Helga and Zohar. And I am sorry to tell you, they are just torsos. They'll be testing out a radiation shielding vest.

I'm a little sad that the women are just torsos, but I mean, I had the same reaction exactly. I was like, they cannot give us like a female mannequin, but whatever. But I do love the names. I do love the names. Okay, let's get back. Tell me more about the mission. Okay, so at a press briefing, the current head of NASA, who's Bill Nelson, a former Florida senator and former astronaut, he said on this trip, all of the looping around the moon will send the capsule farther out into space than any spacecraft built for humans has ever flown before. It will be on a mission of over a million miles to the moon and back and all kinds of orbits. around the moon testing the spacecraft. He said the mission could last 42 days, and when the capsule returns to Earth,

it'll come back hotter and faster than any spacecraft ever. It'll hit the Earth's atmosphere at 32 times the speed of sound. Ooh, better hope the heat shield works. That is part of what they are testing. So assuming all goes well, when would people ride this rocket? Well, the first flight with people would be the next flight on another mission to orbit the moon. And NASA says that won't happen for another couple of years. And then it would be another year or two years until the third flight, which is the one that would try to reach the moon

surface with people. So it doesn't seem like this rocket will be flying all that often then. No. And critics say that's a real problem if NASA is serious about getting people to the moon to live and work. This rocket is just really, really expensive. NASA's inspector general told lawmakers recently, that each of the first three flights will cost over $4 billion. $4 billion for each rocket launch? That's right. And that doesn't include the billions of dollars of development costs. NASA thinks it can bring costs down some after the first flights. But any way you look at it, this rocket is just super, super expensive.

I was talking with Lori Garver. She served as the deputy NASA administrator. And she told me, even if this rocket's first test flight goes perfectly, They will still have to defend the rocket's cost and more difficult, I think, is that there won't be another one for two years. In her view, NASA's big rocket was designed to prop up old infrastructure from long ago, and it's just not going to be sustainable over the long term. But this is the only rocket that can get people to the moon, right? For now, yeah, but SpaceX hasn't exactly been content with just taking astronauts to and from the space station. for NASA. It's also built another more powerful rocket for its business, the Falcon Heavy,

which entrepreneur Elon Musk used to launch one of his Tesla cars out into space. I remember that. The red sports car sailing off with David Bowie playing. It was quite a moment. And it just shows how SpaceX has been plowing ahead with ever more ambitious technology in a way that would have been impossible to predict over a decade ago when lots of people were skeptical about the commercial space. industry and what it could deliver. I mean, SpaceX is currently working on this thing called Starship. It's a beast of stainless steel designed to be fully reusable, to fly often, and to be cheap,

like millions of dollars, rather than billions. So this means that there's competition that didn't exist when NASA started building its own moon rocket, right? Yeah. And Elon Musk says Starship is close to going on its first test flight into orbit. Wow. Lori Garver told me, if it works, how will NASA be able to justify flying its super expensive rocket and capsule? If starship works, they will become redundant.

Wow. It's kind of this crazy thing that after decades of talk about returning to the moon, the U.S. suddenly has not one but two new space vehicles at this advanced stage of development, both of them aiming at the moon and beyond. To me, though, the important thing is that one way or the other, it seems like people are finally heading back to the moon. relatively soon. I think that's right, yeah. And NASA's test flight will give us an idea about what's going to be in store for those folks. Remind me again when the launches? It's Monday morning. There's a launch window that opens at 833 a.m. Eastern time. Ooh, that's a little early for us West Coasters, but I'm going to try to get up early to see it.

Nell, thanks for coming by to talk to us about all of this. No problem. Thanks for having me on the show. Today's episode was produced by Chloe Weiner, edited by Rebecca Ramirez, and fact-checked by Rachel Carlson. Stu Rushfield was the audio engineer. Giselle Grayson is our senior supervising editor. Andrea Kissick is the head of the science desk. Terran Samuel is the vice president and executive editor. Edith Chapin is the vice president and executive editor at large. And Nancy Barnes is our senior vice president of news. I'm Regina Barber. Thank you for listening to Shortwave, the Daily Science Podcast from NPR.