Humanity's Farthest Journey: Artemis II Flies the Moon

0:00 Speaker 1: Welcome to Astronomy Daily, your daily guide to what's happening

0:04 Speaker 1: beyond our world.

0:05 Speaker 2: I'm Anna and I'm Avery, and today today's genuinely one

0:10 Speaker 2: of those days we will remember for the rest of

0:12 Speaker 2: our lives.

0:13 Speaker 1: Fifty four years. That's how long it's been since any

0:18 Speaker 1: human being flew around the far side of the Moon,

0:21 Speaker 1: and yesterday that streak ended.

0:24 Speaker 2: The Artemis two crew Read Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Cooke,

0:29 Speaker 2: and Jeremy Hansen completed a seven hour lunar flyby that

0:34 Speaker 2: has rewritten the history books. We've got the full story,

0:38 Speaker 2: plus a wild NASA budget battle, a European Chinese collaboration,

0:43 Speaker 2: a Blue Origin update, and a spacecraft headed to the

0:47 Speaker 2: space station.

0:48 Speaker 1: Strap in This is Astronomy Daily, Season five, episode eighty three.

0:54 Speaker 2: Let's kick things off with the big one of the day.

0:56 Speaker 1: Okay, let's start where the entire planet's attention has been focused.

1:01 Speaker 1: Two hundred and fifty two thousand, seven hundred and sixty

1:05 Speaker 1: miles from Earth.

1:06 Speaker 2: That's how far the Artemis to Orion spacecraft reached its

1:10 Speaker 2: maximum distance from Earth, officially breaking the record set by

1:14 Speaker 2: the Apollo thirteen crew back in April nineteen seventy. Apollo

1:18 Speaker 2: thirteen got to two hundred and forty eight thousand, six

1:20 Speaker 2: hundred and fifty five miles. Artemis two just beat that

1:24 Speaker 2: by more than four thousand miles.

1:26 Speaker 1: And they didn't just nudge the record. They went farther

1:30 Speaker 1: than any human beings in the history of our species.

1:33 Speaker 1: Let that sink in. The lunar fly by itself kicked

1:37 Speaker 1: off on flight day six, that's Monday, April sixth NASA

1:41 Speaker 1: scientists had prepared a packed science plan, thirty five specific

1:45 Speaker 1: geological targets on the lunar surface, pen science objectives, and

1:49 Speaker 1: the crew working in two person ships to photograph and

1:52 Speaker 1: document as much as possible. Closest approach came at just

1:56 Speaker 1: four thousand, sixty seven miles above the surface. That's close

2:00 Speaker 1: enough to see individual craters in extraordinary detail. From there,

2:05 Speaker 1: the spacecraft swung around the far side of the Moon

2:08 Speaker 1: and the crew went silent for about forty five minutes

2:12 Speaker 1: as the Moon blocked all communication with Earth.

2:15 Speaker 2: And when they came back, the crew described witnessing an

2:18 Speaker 2: Earth set and then an Earth rise as the Earth

2:21 Speaker 2: dropped below and then re emerged from the lunar horizon.

2:24 Speaker 2: Commander Reid Wiseman said, and I'm paraphrasing here that these

2:28 Speaker 2: numbers two hundred and fifty thousand miles are simply impossible

2:33 Speaker 2: for the human brain to process when you're actually living them.

2:37 Speaker 1: Mission specialist Christina Cock had an emotional moment too. She

2:41 Speaker 1: became the first woman in history to complete a lunar flyby,

2:46 Speaker 1: and when she spoke to NASA administrator Jared Isaacman, she

2:49 Speaker 1: said she wasn't ready to go home.

2:52 Speaker 2: Victor Glover described the Moon out the window as one

2:54 Speaker 2: of the darkest things they could see, with deep space

2:58 Speaker 2: behind it, appearing like a deep surreal blue stars visible

3:02 Speaker 2: even through that darkness. His words, it's a quite a

3:06 Speaker 2: wicked view.

3:07 Speaker 1: And another astronaut we believe it was, Jeremy Hanson, said,

3:10 Speaker 1: there are simply no adjectives that they need to invent

3:14 Speaker 1: new ones, just phenomenal.

3:17 Speaker 2: But it didn't stop there. As oryan swung back around,

3:20 Speaker 2: the crew witnessed something extraordinarily rare, a total solar eclipse,

3:25 Speaker 2: as seen from beyond the Moon's far side. The Sun

3:28 Speaker 2: disappeared behind the lunar disc for nearly an hour.

3:32 Speaker 1: And they used every second of it scientifically studying the

3:36 Speaker 1: solar Corona, glowing around the edge of the Moon, watching

3:39 Speaker 1: for meteoroid impacts on the lunar surface, and observing illuminated

3:44 Speaker 1: lunar dust. It was a science feast in the middle

3:47 Speaker 1: of a history making adventure.

3:50 Speaker 2: President Trump called in afterward to congratulate the crew, calling

3:53 Speaker 2: it one of the proudest moments for America. Commander Wiseman

3:56 Speaker 2: said his favorite site was watching Mars align with the

3:59 Speaker 2: other planets during the eclipse and musing about humanity becoming

4:04 Speaker 2: a two planet species.

4:06 Speaker 1: So where is the crew now? Day seven is a

4:09 Speaker 1: rest day, well earned. I'd say they eight brings a

4:12 Speaker 1: radiation shelter construction demonstration and manual piloting tests. Day ten,

4:18 Speaker 1: April tenth, is splashed down day the Pacific Ocean off

4:22 Speaker 1: San Diego.

4:23 Speaker 2: Between now and then, the spacecraft will perform three trajectory

4:27 Speaker 2: correction burns to fine tune its return path. And Orion's toilet,

4:32 Speaker 2: which has had a few headline worthy hiccups, appears to

4:35 Speaker 2: be operating normally now after a frozen waistline was resolved.

4:40 Speaker 1: The space toilet always a crowd pleaser, but genuinely the

4:44 Speaker 1: universal waste management system is being tested as the first

4:48 Speaker 1: deep space bathroom, critical technology for future long duration missions.

4:53 Speaker 2: Fun fact time. The Artemis two cruise wake up songs

4:57 Speaker 2: are curated by mission control and beamed up to start

5:00 Speaker 2: each day. The playlist is on Spotify look for it.

5:03 Speaker 2: It's a genuine artifact of this mission.

5:06 Speaker 1: Also, the crew's zero gravity indicator, the small toy or

5:10 Speaker 1: object that floats freely in the cabin showing when you've

5:13 Speaker 1: reached weightlessness, is an adorable stuffed animal they called Rise

5:17 Speaker 1: So far, it's living up to the name.

5:19 Speaker 2: And in a lovely Easter weekend moment before the flyby,

5:23 Speaker 2: pilot Victor Glover shared a message about how the mission

5:26 Speaker 2: reminds us of our shared humanity. As he said, we

5:29 Speaker 2: are the same thing, and we've got to get through

5:32 Speaker 2: this together. Beautiful sentiment. Two hundred and fifty thousand miles

5:36 Speaker 2: from home.

5:37 Speaker 1: The crew also attempted to recreate the famous Apollo eight

5:41 Speaker 1: earth rise photograph from nineteen sixty eight, one of the

5:44 Speaker 1: most important images in human history. We'll be watching for

5:48 Speaker 1: those photos as their downlink now.

5:50 Speaker 2: Even as the world celebrates Artemis two, there's a storm

5:54 Speaker 2: brewing back on Earth over NASA's finances. The White House

5:57 Speaker 2: Office of Management and budget released. It's FY twenty twenty

6:01 Speaker 2: seven budget for NASA, and it's a repeat of last

6:04 Speaker 2: year's deeply controversial cuts.

6:06 Speaker 1: The headline number eighteen point eight billion dollars. That's a

6:11 Speaker 1: twenty three percent reduction from NASA's current twenty four point

6:14 Speaker 1: four billion dollar budget, and the hardest hit the Science

6:18 Speaker 1: Mission Directorate, slashed by forty seven percent, from seven point

6:22 Speaker 1: twenty five billion dollars down to three point nine billion.

6:26 Speaker 2: Casey Dreyer of the Planetary Society called it bluntly an

6:30 Speaker 2: extinction level event for science. More than forty missions would

6:34 Speaker 2: be terminated, although the document only maims two specifically the

6:38 Speaker 2: Mars Sample Return Mission and the Severe Global Climate Data Program.

6:42 Speaker 1: Notably, exploration funding meaning ARTEMIS would actually increase by nearly

6:48 Speaker 1: ten percent to eight point five billion dollars. So the

6:51 Speaker 1: administration's message is clear, Humans to the moon, but science

6:55 Speaker 1: takes the hit.

6:56 Speaker 2: Here's the important context. Though Congress rejected almost identical cuts

7:01 Speaker 2: last year, the same eighteen point eight billion dollar request

7:05 Speaker 2: was made for FY twenty twenty six, and lawmakers chose

7:08 Speaker 2: to restore science funding across the board. Advocates say there's

7:11 Speaker 2: every reason to believe Congress will push back again.

7:15 Speaker 1: But the uncertainty is damaging regardless. Missions like the Nancy

7:19 Speaker 1: Grace Roman space telescope expected to launch later this year

7:23 Speaker 1: and the Dragonfly Titan rotorcraft are among those potentially in

7:27 Speaker 1: the crosshairs.

7:28 Speaker 2: While all eyes are on the Moon, the International Space

7:31 Speaker 2: Station isn't going hungry. Tomorrow, Wednesday, April eighth, a SpaceX

7:36 Speaker 2: Falcon nine is set to launch from Cape Canaveral, carrying

7:39 Speaker 2: Northrop Grumman's signas spacecraft on the NG twenty four mission.

7:43 Speaker 1: This signus has been named the SS Stephen R. Nagel

7:47 Speaker 1: in honor of the former NASA astronaut who flew four

7:50 Speaker 1: Space Shuttle missions and logged seven hundred and twenty three

7:54 Speaker 1: hours in space.

7:55 Speaker 2: The XL configuration is carrying more than eleven thousand pounds

7:59 Speaker 2: of supplies and science hardware for the expedition seventy three crew.

8:04 Speaker 2: Highlights include an upgrade to NASA's cold Atom Lab, which

8:07 Speaker 2: uses ultrapoled atoms to study quantum behavior, and equipment to

8:12 Speaker 2: help produce therapeutic stem cells for blood and cancer treatment research.

8:16 Speaker 1: There's also an AI powered climate camera built through a

8:19 Speaker 1: partnership between the Egyptian Kenyon and Ugandan space agencies. The

8:24 Speaker 1: climb Camp payload designed to provide near real time weather

8:28 Speaker 1: data for disaster management in East Africa.

8:31 Speaker 2: Unlike SpaceX's Dragon, Signus doesn't dock autonomously. Astronauts aboard the

8:36 Speaker 2: station use the canad Arm two robotic arm to capture it,

8:39 Speaker 2: then ground controllers dock it to the Unity Module, a

8:43 Speaker 2: real team effort between humans and ground control.

8:46 Speaker 1: Now, while Artemis two is grabbing most of the headlines,

8:50 Speaker 1: there's another remarkable mission launching in less than forty eight hours,

8:55 Speaker 1: and this one is a genuine first in the history

8:58 Speaker 1: of space science.

9:00 Speaker 2: On Thursday, April ninth, the SMILE mission lifts off from

9:04 Speaker 2: europe Spaceport in French Guiana on a Vegas Sea rocket.

9:09 Speaker 2: SMILE stands for the Solar Wind, Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer.

9:14 Speaker 2: What it promises to deliver is humanity's very first complete

9:19 Speaker 2: simultaneous view of how Earth's magnetic shield responds to the Sun.

9:24 Speaker 1: Think of it this way. Earth is constantly bombarded by

9:29 Speaker 1: charged particles streaming from the Sun the solar Wind. Our

9:33 Speaker 1: planet is protected by a massive invisible magnetic bubble called

9:38 Speaker 1: the magnetosphere. Without it, life on Earth simply could not exist.

9:44 Speaker 1: We've been studying pieces of this interaction for decades, but

9:47 Speaker 1: we've never been able to image the whole system at once.

9:51 Speaker 1: Smile will change that.

9:54 Speaker 2: It carries four instruments, a soft X ray imager, an

9:58 Speaker 2: ultraviolet aurora camera, a light ion analyzer, and a magnetometer,

10:04 Speaker 2: all working together in real time to capture the magnetosphere

10:07 Speaker 2: as a complete dynamic system for the first time ever.

10:13 Speaker 1: The orbit is extraordinary. After launch, Smile fires its engines

10:18 Speaker 1: eleven times over twenty five days to stretch its path

10:22 Speaker 1: into a highly elongated loop, reaching one hundred and twenty

10:26 Speaker 1: one thousand kilometers above the North Pole, been sweeping back

10:31 Speaker 1: down to just five thousand kilometers above the South pole

10:35 Speaker 1: to beam its data home. Each orbit takes roughly two days.

10:40 Speaker 2: At its high point over the North Pole, Smile will

10:43 Speaker 2: continuously image the entire day side magnetosphere for up to

10:47 Speaker 2: forty hours per orbit. That's the longest uninterrupted auroral observation

10:53 Speaker 2: ever planned from space, a capability that's been missing since

10:57 Speaker 2: two thousand and eight.

10:58 Speaker 1: There's also a remarkable geopolitical dimension here. Smile is a

11:03 Speaker 1: joint mission between ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences,

11:08 Speaker 1: the first mission ever jointly designed, built, launched, and operated

11:13 Speaker 1: by both agencies. That partnership has survived a decade of development,

11:19 Speaker 1: technical setbacks, COVID delays, and considerable political headwinds. The fact

11:24 Speaker 1: that it's launching at all is itself a statement.

11:28 Speaker 2: And the practical stakes are high. Better understanding of space

11:32 Speaker 2: weather and earlier prediction of solar storms protects satellites, power grids,

11:37 Speaker 2: financial systems, and communications networks worldwide. Liftoff is set for

11:43 Speaker 2: zero seven twenty nine BST on April ninth, with life

11:47 Speaker 2: coverage on ESA WebTV.

11:50 Speaker 1: The name Smile comes from the mission acronym, but there's

11:53 Speaker 1: a literal smile involved too. ESA's simulations of what the

11:59 Speaker 1: X ray camera will see show a smiley faced shaped

12:02 Speaker 1: pattern of X ray emission from Earth's magnetosphere, which may

12:07 Speaker 1: be the most delightful coincidence in all of space science.

12:11 Speaker 2: The spacecraft weighs twenty three hundred kilograms, but fifteen hundred

12:16 Speaker 2: and eighty of those kilograms are fuel. It burns through

12:19 Speaker 2: ninety percent of its propellant in the first month alone

12:23 Speaker 2: just to reach its science orbit. It's essentially a fuel

12:26 Speaker 2: tank attached to instruments.

12:28 Speaker 1: Here's a story that connects directly to Artemis two and

12:32 Speaker 1: the dream of long term human presence on the Moon.

12:36 Speaker 1: We know there's water ice locked in the permanently shadowed

12:39 Speaker 1: craters near the lunar south Pole, but we don't really

12:43 Speaker 1: know how much or exactly where Blue Origin wants to

12:47 Speaker 1: fix that.

12:49 Speaker 2: Earlier this year, at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference,

12:53 Speaker 2: Blue Origin formally introduced Oasis one, the first mission in

12:57 Speaker 2: what it's calling Project Oasis, a multi phase initiative to identify, assess,

13:04 Speaker 2: and ultimately use the Moon's resources in C two. Oasis

13:08 Speaker 2: one is a two spacecraft mission, a pair of small

13:11 Speaker 2: SATs to be deployed from Blue Origins uncrewed MK one Lander.

13:17 Speaker 1: The two spacecraft will enter a highly elliptical, low polar orbit,

13:21 Speaker 1: with their lowest point skimming just ten kilometers above the

13:25 Speaker 1: lunar South Pole, close enough to collect extraordinarily detailed data

13:31 Speaker 1: about what's actually in those permanently shadowed regions.

13:35 Speaker 2: The instrument suite is purpose built for prospecting, neutron spectroscopy

13:40 Speaker 2: to measure subsurface waterized concentrations down to one meter depth,

13:46 Speaker 2: magnetometers for metal detection, a multi spectral push broom spectrometer

13:52 Speaker 2: for helium three and geological mapping. It's essentially a mining

13:56 Speaker 2: survey from orbit with resolution in some modes down to

14:00 Speaker 2: less than five meters per pixel.

14:03 Speaker 1: And then comes the finale. After ninety days of global mapping,

14:08 Speaker 1: Oasis one conducts a controlled slow motion descent a ten

14:12 Speaker 1: day de orbit face where the instruments keep working at

14:15 Speaker 1: ultra low altitudes right up until impact. Bill be mapping

14:19 Speaker 1: water deposits at hundreds of meters per pixel in those

14:22 Speaker 1: final hours science right to the end.

14:26 Speaker 2: The commercial model is fascinating too. Blue Origin plants to

14:29 Speaker 2: license the resulting resource maps to other companies who need

14:33 Speaker 2: that data to design lunar mining hardware and attract investors.

14:38 Speaker 2: Any data without direct commercial use goes public via the

14:42 Speaker 2: European Space Resources Innovation Center. It's open science built on

14:46 Speaker 2: a commercial backbone.

14:48 Speaker 1: The project is a partnership with Luxembourg and its Small

14:51 Speaker 1: Space Agency, continuing that small nations long tradition of being

14:56 Speaker 1: surprisingly central to the space resources industry, and it ties

15:00 Speaker 1: directly into Blue Origin's Blue Alchemist program, which aims to

15:04 Speaker 1: process lunar regolith into oxygen, solar cells and power cables.

15:09 Speaker 1: The Moon as a self sustaining infrastructure.

15:11 Speaker 2: Hub, as Blue Origins VP of Advanced Concepts Pat Rami

15:16 Speaker 2: has put it, once we know what's really there and

15:19 Speaker 2: how to access it, everything changes. With Artemis two heading

15:23 Speaker 2: home right now, that future is feeling closer than ever

15:27 Speaker 2: before we go.

15:28 Speaker 1: Let's look ahead at what's happening in the night sky

15:31 Speaker 1: this month, because April is actually a great time to

15:34 Speaker 1: be outside looking up.

15:35 Speaker 2: Comet c Slash twenty twenty five R three is your

15:39 Speaker 2: prime target. It's expected to peek around April seventeenth and

15:43 Speaker 2: make its closest approach to Earth on April twenty seventh,

15:46 Speaker 2: coming within forty four million miles. Magnitude estimates put it

15:51 Speaker 2: around eight so you'll need binoculars or a small telescope,

15:54 Speaker 2: but it should be a very rewarding site. In the

15:57 Speaker 2: eastern pre Don sky.

15:59 Speaker 1: Ben there's the Lyriid meteor shower, which peaks on the

16:02 Speaker 1: night of April twenty first into the twenty second. The

16:05 Speaker 1: Lyriads are one of the oldest recorded meteor showers. There

16:08 Speaker 1: are observations going back to six hundred and eighty seven BC.

16:12 Speaker 1: They come from debris shed by Comet Thatcher, and you'll

16:15 Speaker 1: want to look toward the constellation Lira from around ten

16:18 Speaker 1: pm local time.

16:20 Speaker 2: The moon should be relatively cooperative for the Larids this year,

16:24 Speaker 2: meaning darker skies for the peak, and if you have

16:26 Speaker 2: a clear horizon just before sunrise, Mercury is putting on

16:30 Speaker 2: its best showing of the year as well. Look east

16:33 Speaker 2: just above Mars.

16:35 Speaker 1: And that is your Astronomy Daily for Tuesday, April seventh,

16:39 Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. What a day to be alive and

16:43 Speaker 1: curious about the universe.

16:45 Speaker 2: The Artemis two crew are heading home. They've seen what

16:48 Speaker 2: no human has since nineteen seventy two, and the science,

16:52 Speaker 2: the photos, the data, all of that is just beginning

16:56 Speaker 2: to come back to Earth.

16:57 Speaker 1: If this episode has inspired you, share it with someone

17:00 Speaker 1: who needs a little cosmic wonder in their day. You'll

17:03 Speaker 1: find us wherever great podcasts are heard, and all the

17:07 Speaker 1: links are in the show notes.

17:08 Speaker 2: Find us on x, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube at astro

17:12 Speaker 2: Daily Pod and visit Astronomy Daily dot io for extended

17:17 Speaker 2: show notes and resources.

17:19 Speaker 1: Until tomorrow, keep looking.

17:20 Speaker 2: Up Sunny Day, star Sto star Sto