SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
NASA's historic Artemis II mission is on track. Yesterday's launch from the Kennedy Space Center successfully put the crew's Orion capsule into space and on course to eventually loop around the moon and back.
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DERROL NAIL: Three, two, one. Booster ignition and lift off. The crew of Artemis II now bound for the moon. Humanity's next great voyage begins.
DETROW: It's NASA's first mission to send astronauts to the moon in more than 50 years, and now the Artemis II crew is in orbit with planet Earth in their windows.
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CHRISTINA KOCH: I just wanted to describe for you guys the beauty that we're seeing. You can actually make out the coastline of the continent. You can make out rivers because of the sun glare. You can see high thunder clouds, and all the while, you can see the entire terminator, and you can see the South Pole lit up. It's just phenomenal.
DETROW: Just before the launch, I spoke with Dr. Kelsey Young, the lunar science lead for the Artemis II mission.
I want to talk about the moon in a moment, but first I wanted to ask you about is the spacecraft there and the Orion capsule. I toured it a couple years ago with the crew. I sat inside it, and I just could not comprehend spending 10 days inside that space. How do you describe this vehicle? And what do you as a non-astronaut working closely in this mission think about the fact that they're all going to be crammed in there for that long?
KELSEY YOUNG: I'm really glad that you've been in it. It - I have been in it many, many times, and, you know, from the context of this is where these astronauts are going to be actually observing the moon. And so, like, how is that physical choreography going to work with each other?
DETROW: Yeah.
YOUNG: But of course, you know, as a human being, you can't help but be like, wow, there are four people, some of which are quite large humans, that are going to be crammed together in this tight space for a very long time. Good news is they really get along (laughter). But actually, we did run a training exercise with them in the mockup that it sounds like you have been in, and we actually hung a giant inflatable moon globe on a crane from inside the high bay of the space vehicle mockup facility outside of the window of the Orion mockup and actually had them get inside with the hardware they'll use for the lunar flyby and take a picture and describe the giant inflatable moon globe out their window.
DETROW: Tell me when in a few days they'll be seeing the real moon out that window, what they'll physically be seeing, how close they're going to be to the moon, what the view is going to be.
YOUNG: The view for the Artemis II crew will definitely be different than the view that the Apollo crews got when they were orbiting the moon over 50 years ago. The moon to them will appear about the size of a basketball held at arm's length, and that's at the moment of closest approach. So the time when during the flyby they are the closest they will be to the moon. And this is actually really exciting scientifically. My background is impact cratering, and I'm a field geologist, and impact craters are really important geologically, especially on the moon 'cause they can toss material hundreds if not thousands of kilometers.
They'll be able to see that entire space in the blink of an eye and make observations that will place processes like that that are so important for lunar evolution in context all in one moment. The plan of attack that the crew will have during their several hour flyby - that actually gives them a list of lunar targets and why they're interesting scientifically with prompts to lead them into how they're giving their descriptions and what they're taking photographs of. So 10 science objectives lead to a list of targets for a six-hour flyby, and each target on a piece of software that our team has developed actually walks them through what we're looking for in each target.
DETROW: I'm glad you said six hours because on a human level, I had the worry and wonder of - is everybody going to have enough time to look out the window at the moon? And it seems like, yes, that feels very important for morale.
YOUNG: Morale, yes, and also a science because humans perceive color very differently, and we really - one of our highest priority science objectives for the mission is actually looking at color. And you might say, hey, wait, when I look up at the moon, I see black, I see white, and I see shades of gray. What are you talking about? We actually do know from Apollo and from crew observations, both from orbit in Apollo and from the surface, that there are subtle color nuances, and those nuances are really important as it turns out for lunar science. So it's actually those color observations that each human can perceive slightly differently, that means we're really excited to get four data points when we're around the moon rather than just one.
DETROW: You know, there's a lot of science here, but there's also this feeling of exploration and romance to a moon mission, and it makes me wonder, what first drew you to the moon? What was the first appeal that you had that made you get to the point of, I really want to focus on this and study this myself.
YOUNG: It was rocks.
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YOUNG: So my dad grew up taking my sister and I on hiking trips. We went, you know, to national parks and state parks and things like that. And I just loved, like, climbing around on the rocks and really kind of, like, going to the visitor center and learning about what formed these terrains. And then I got to undergrad, and I found out that people could study rocks for their whole job. They could get paid to study rocks. And I happened to be at a program that had a great planetary science component. And when I found out that I could spend kind of my career looking at exploring geologic terrains on other planetary surfaces and helping crew members do that one day, I never looked back.
DETROW: There you go. Dr. Kelsey Young is the lunar science lead for the Artemis II mission. Thank you so much for talking to us.
YOUNG: Thanks for having me. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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