[Music] welcome to NASA science live this is your chance to interact with NASA experts and have your questions answered in real time I'm your host Tahira Allen on today's episode we're exploring NASA's historic Endeavor to partner with American companies to deliver Science and Technology to the Moon through the commercial lunar payload service initiative also known as clips now on February 22nd intuitive machines odys Lander touchdown on the lunar South Pole region delivering NASA's Science and
Technology to the surface odys is continue to operate on the moon collecting important data taking phot photos and deploying NASA instruments in advance of upcoming human missions to this same region let's get a better understanding of this new way to deliver Science and Technology to the Moon our moon it seems so close in the night sky but getting there is really hard but what if there was a way to change that only a few Nations have successfully landed on the moon stage as sends astronauts bac
k to the lunar surface this time to stay we will need to send Science and Technology instruments ahead of time to lay the foundation for human exploration to make this happen NASA is helping establish a commercial lunar economy for the first time ever there will be commercial delivery services to the Moon we are enabling American companies to send our payloads to the lunar surface for us these delivery services will expand our capabilities for exploration radically increasing the amount of scien
ce we can achieve this high-risk High reward initiative will invest in and Leverage The entrepreneurial Spirit of American innovation to launch a commercial lunar Marketplace advancing technology and exploration for all of us with this never-before seen streamlined access to the Moon we will be able to make novel measurements and develop Technologies that scientists have long wanted to do on the lunar surface and as this new industry matures this commercial delivery service for NASA and other cu
stomers could expand beyond the moon to other destinations in our solar system and we can learn to live on another world because we are explorers as you can see all of this is in an effort to conduct science test Technologies and demonstrate capabilities to help NASA explore many regions of the Moon multiple times a year as we prepare for Artemis let's jump in to discuss what we've learned from the science that operated on the moon over this past week now as a reminder if you have questions thro
ughout Today's show you can send them in using the hashtag asknasa on social media or by dropping your questions directly into the comment stream wherever you're watching today we are joined by two very special guests who are going to be answering those questions live on air we have Dr Sue letterer who is the project scientist for Clips here at Nasa welcome Sue very happy to be here with you and we have Deborah NM who is a program scientist for the agency's science Mission directorate hey Debora
h hi Tavira great to have be here today yeah and thank you so much for being here with us us now to kick things off titles at Nasa can be a bit technical could you both go into a little bit of detail about your individual roles on the clips initiative Sue why don't we start with you absolutely as the NASA Clips project scientist for this Mission I've been working with our payload teams planning for operations during the years leading up to the mission and ultimately for the past two weeks I sat
on Console in the NASA back room at im's Mission Control to help orchestrate our payload teams both in transit to the Moon as well as on the surface of the Moon so throughout this time I worked alongside a full Massa Ops team as well as with our payload teams it's an exciting time oh can't wait to hear more about that too later on in the show Deborah what about you yeah thanks so I'm um kind of on the more programmatic side uh so I helped create the opportunities for the instrument teams to prop
ose and execute the amazing science investigations um across the clips program and I also worked with the selected science teams and Technology teams to establish what it means for their investigations to be successful during this Mission well this is really great I mean it is such an exciting time in space exploration you know over these past few weeks with the US's first soft landing on the moon in over 50 years now we have six NASA payloads on the lunar surface thanks to odys is um intuitive
machines Odus Lander Sue could you give us a quick summary of these six NASA experiments absolutely so we have sort of this common theme amongst the six payloads uh the NASA payloads on im1 tested technologies that will help to pave the way for how to navigate to and land safely as well as autonomously on the lunar surface they've also allowed us to investigate the environment that the NASA emis astronaut astronauts will experience and to help to develop technology that we need to live and work
safely on the surface of the Moon and so would you mind so I understand there's six payloads that were delivered to the surface of the Moon could you give us a quick just highlevel summary of what each of those six were absolutely so first the payloads are all on board the im1 lunar lander that's formerly called Odus but we like to call him ODI so on ODI includes a number of different Nas instruments the first is the navigation Doppler liar it used lasers to help measure how fast and how close t
o the Lander OD was or how close the Lander OD was to the surface of the Moon as it landed the im1 Lander navigation system was also designed to use some of the data generated by this instrument during its descent and landing in addition to using another Suite of navigation instruments that were installed by intuitive machines the laser retro reflector array can reflect light emitted by an incoming or orbiting spacecraft right back at the spacecraft to give future spacecraft a reference point on
the lunar surface lras are also installed on other Landers already on the moon and will be put on future Landers with other Nas Eclipse payloads next is the radio frequency Mass gauge this measured propellant and fuel in the tanks throughout the mission from fueling the tanks before launch throughout transiting to the Moon under micro gravity conditions as well as during and after landing next is Stereo cameras for lunar plume surface studies whose goal was to image the engine exhaust plume as
it churned up the dust on the lunar surface its secondary goal was to image the exposed fresh surface below the Lander throughout the lunar day for science investigations wasn't able to collect data on descent this time but we were able to test it in space as well as after landing to help prepare for its next mission which will be on Firefly's Blue Ghost Lander coming up later this year the next payload is called radio wave observations at the lunar surface of the photo electron shei it's a payl
oad that conducted radioastronomy both in transit to the Moon as well as from the surface by detecting radio waves emitted by the currently radio quiet sun it baselined how radio noisy the Earth is from the lunar surface both at high frequencies and low it took data designed to measure dust impacts to help us better prepare for the environment for future Artemis missions that will be exposed to this dust and finally lunar Node 1 tested technologies that act like a lighthouse that guides a ship b
ut instead using radio waves that can help guide spaceships serving as a beacon for autonomous navigation kind of like how we use GPS on the earth and the Ln team one team didn't know it when we launched but they played a big role in helping the 1 Lander ODI navigate from the earth to the moon so that's our set of six NASA payloads carried to the Moon by IM one's Mission and a Lander we call OD wow and I mean just such cool Innovative technology and so I understand you know we've we've landed on
the moon the science is operational we're receiving data back from it Deborah what happens next yeah that's a great question so I mean for intuitive machines for this delivery um the payload team will continue to analyze the data that they've brought back and and also archive the data that that can be archived so that other Science and Technology teams can use that data um for their own projects and and to better understand the the environment of the lunar surface um going forward but for Clips
this is just the uh one of the first deliveries demonstrating the concept for the commercial lar payload Services um this is the second attempt and the first successful attempt um to land on this on the surface of the Moon and for these initial clipse um missions that is exactly what we were looking for is establishing this as a capability for the agency and and really for the world to take advantage of to get better um more frequent and more affordable access to the lunar surface so going forw
ard um we actually have six more uh deliveries that NASA has contracted with American companies um two more even just this year it's an incredible incredibly busy time for us for lunar science um but so two more later this year and then four more going forward um to deliver NASA science payloads uh to the lunar surface very excited about all the science opportunities that are coming up for Clips yeah absolutely and that this is just the beginning um and so I want to stick on this topic of Clips
but kind of zoom out a little bit Deborah could you help put into context how Clips is beneficial official to NASA's Artemis campaign and building this sustained presence on the moon yeah absolutely um there are a couple different um different answers to that question um or let's say parts of the answers um so one is uh NASA and Science in general have many outstanding science questions about the moon um where did the moon come from when did it form how did it um change over time how did the act
ivity on the lar surface change over time um that require Global access across the lunar surface um so Clips offers that opportunity and and those those science objectives are fed into the the Artemis but into into NASA's Moon to Mars campaign so looking um at the Moon to learn more about the moon but also our place in the solar system so going forward onto Mars as well um but for emis in particular Clips establishing this capability of access um and delivery to the lunar surface has the potenti
al to enable us to deliver um science instruments or tools that the emis astronauts can use and deploy um in in the future during Artemis missions so it can be a direct link um between clips and Artemis and enabling um and enhancing Artemis exploration going forward this is so cool to think about right the future of human exploration lunar science and so we have a lot of great questions coming in online from our viewers so let's just jump right into this Q&A as a reminder for those watching live
you can submit your questions for Deborah and Sue by using the hashtag ask NASA on social media or by dropping your question directly into the comment stream wherever you're watching all right so our first question today is from the scientific potato on YouTube who asks do you believe that this technology will help us possibly get humans to Mars one day Sue why don't you take this one I absolutely believe that the technology that we're using for Clips can apply to Mars and in fact we're having
those discussions right now about how that potential can be used uh for the future as we noted earlier there's a lot of technologies that we are designing and veloping and testing right now for clips that allow us to land safely on a planetary surface and because they allow us to land on the Moon it also is technology that can be used for landing safely on Mars as well and Deborah I know you're involved too in kind of the choosing of these science instruments is that something that you all that
the agency keeps in mind when determining which instrument makes it on a um on a Lander yeah that's a that's a great question um so for for the moon we do have there there are fundamental questions that can only be addressed on the lunar surface um for example um so the moon surface preserves the most ancient um times of of the solar system history whereas Earth for example and and Mars too to an extent re has experienced drastic resurfacing um wind water even running water early on Mars history
has reshaped the surface although Mars does have ancient trins we look to the Moon as the Cornerstone for understanding the um the timing and the in earliest environment of the lunar um of the solar system environment during which planets generally were were forming um from their from their from the primordial soup of of the um solar nebula so we do look to the Moon in particular for um for learning about we have specific science objectives at the Moon that we're addressing with many of these i
nvestigations but there are capabilities like exactly like Sue said there are capabilities not only landing and descent Technologies but also scientific instruments um and the Technologies associated with those that can be applied um to to Mars as well and so sue I actually have a great question for you we have Pierce wheel relay on X who asks does NASA see itself working with intuitive machines well into the future I can tell you that we already have two additional task orders that's what we ca
ll them at Nasa but there's two more missions that intuitive machines is working on with us already in play so we have im2 and that will take both a drill as well as a science instrument it's called a mass spectrometer the concept is that it actually sniffs the volatiles like water and methane and things that can easily evaporate uh and tries to figure out whether or not we have any detection of water on the surface of the Moon we certainly have evidence that water exists there and so we're brin
ging instruments to detect water to a number of different locations in the South Pole and IM 2's mission is going to be one of the first that will allow us to do that and then I am3 is also already contracted with intuitive machines they have a suite of what we call prism instruments that's just one of the programs that NASA has that's designed to take instruments that aren't just built by NASA but they are also built by other companies and as well as Academia so there's a number of different in
struments that will be taken uh on the im3 Lander as well so we have Rovers we have Hoppers we have drills we have instruments trying to sniff to figure out what's on the surface there's all kinds of additional science like Deborah was saying that is very specific to the moon and others that can be applied to other places like Mars for the future okay so we have a lot to look forward to Deborah we have our Cal manzoo on YouTube who wants to know when can we expect this next clips launch oh yeah
like Sue said it's later this year um we actually have two more um one slated for fall and one slated for winter of this year we're very much looking forward to to getting those off the ground and onto the lar surface now these clips launches as y'all had mentioned earlier are really laying the groundwork for future human missions to this exact same region we have a question from Heidi Williams on YouTube who wants to know when will humans go back to the Moon Sue oh gosh uh that's a very good qu
estion and the Artemis program is designed to bring us with humans back to the Moon um and I actually think Deborah is probably the better person to answer what the the current estimate is for when Artemis is expected to both orbit the earth kind of like Apollo eight did as well as to land on the surface yeah so uh the yeah the next aremis dates are are currently slated for um late 2025 to orbit and 2026 to land so that's that's the plan right now that we're pushing forward to get get humans bac
k to the surface of the Moon we're so excited to get the um get really having humans explore the surface is so important um humans have I mean obviously cognitive capabilities they can think in real time um decisions for how they're going to select which samples put that in context with the surrounding materials and and help us learn so much more in such a much shorter period of time uh that U we're just can't wait to get them back to the surface and and debor why is go uh why why is this lunar
South Pole region of such interest to NASA yeah so as Sue said um we have detail um data that we have taken uh from orbiting uh scientific instruments that point to uh the potential for Water Resources um in the South polar region and those resources are important for enabling a sustained human presence um for exploration on on the on the lunar surface but also pushing forward to um exploring Mars um so as you're seeing on the screen those blue areas are where we pin pointed from orbital measure
ments where there's hydrogen and hydroxy um materials on the surface and we have to learn what how how is those how are those materials on the surface are they on top on the very surface could we just scrape them up or do we have to drill down into the subsurface are they blocks of ice or are they just um part of the mineral grains of parts of the Rocks themselves that we have to really work to get them extracted um so that we could process them and use them for exploration um so a lot of the um
missions that were planning like the the im2 um analysis are helping us understand how those um volatiles those materials are situated in the surface and figure out how we can use those to help sustain presence um but those materials are in really challenging places to get to um there are locations that are permanently shadowed from Human from the Sun so we so the Sun never actually directly lights up those areas and those areas are really hard to explore um I mean the the um equipment that we
usually bring requires sunlight to power it um so the great thing about the south po region is that those areas of permanently shadowed regions are really close to areas that have prolonged um illumination and they're higher high in elevation so that the Sun um Can con not constantly but for long periods where the sun illuminates that surface enabling us to power the equipment we need to access the permanently shattered regions and so I want to actually take us back now to the science and techno
logy that was delivered to the lunar surface we have skd um actually no we have Alexandra 552 on YouTube who asks what information were you most excited to obtain from the recent I am Mission Sue sounds like a good one for you you know it's funny we have six NASA instruments and I've been asked before which is my favorite instrument and to have a favorite instrument is kind of like to have a favorite child you love them all but you just love them differently so for us it's been exciting that we
can do radio astronomy for the first time both in transit as well as on the lunar surface it's exciting that we can use the ln1 the lunar node one to help us really learn how to navigate to the moon and how to understand how to communicate back with the Earth uh ndl this navigation Doppler lighter is so well suited to use Laser Technology that allows us to really pinpoint how high up and how fast we're going and so that's that's been really fun they've gotten a lot of really good information bac
k from that payload as well um and these U laser retr reflectors that can just kind of fit in the palm of your hand uh they're they're cute little instruments but they're really powerful to allow us to create this whole network um of of data that we can really create this uh the pinpoint of where the Landers are after they're on the surface um and then scalps near and dear to all of our hearts they have these stereo camera images uh that they're designed to take and we're really looking forward
to the blos Lander that's later uh this year Firefly is launching because we also have a scalps that's on sorry I forget the the full name I know supposed to be using your the full name um but it's basically taking stereo camera images uh and that should be really exciting for us to do some additional Wier science from the surface so it's for me it's very hard to choose a favorite uh and in fact with all of those that are doing a little bit of science we we have some things that are purely Tech
demonstration like the radio frequency Mass gauge where I mean when you're in a car and you have the fuel that's being pulled down you can figure out how much gas you've got left well if you're in microgravity and it all floats around how do you figure out how much fuel and propellant you have left so we had to figure out a different way to do that and the radio frequency Mas gauge allows us to do that so they're all my favorites in different ways because they're all doing technology and science
and a little bit of a way um so yeah it's hard to say what the favorite is they're all favorites well I actually have a great followup to that we have skd on YouTube who asks do you think that this technology is going to allow us to space travel for a longer time now with more efficient Energy power yeah I think that uh definitely it will we have these like for instance our lunar node one allows us to communicate back and forth between the spacecraft and the Earth it allows us to do a better jo
b at estimating what its orbit is and what its trajectory from the Earth to wherever we're going uh will be so that's a really good one and then again this radio frequency mask gauge how is it that you know how much fuel you have left if you don't know that how do you know how to really know if you can um have a longer burn or a shorter burn how is it that you're going to use your spacecraft to be able to navigate to the next place out so we definitely have some capability for the longer term ju
st the initial early stages of that um but but we're on our way there and so thinking about this longer term right we have Edward Wong on YouTube who wants to know will NASA ever build a moon base Deborah you want to take that one yeah absolutely that's that's the plan that's that's what a su one interpretation of what a sustained human presence on the lunar surface um means and so NASA is actively planning what does a base lunar base look like um but that's what the Artemis program is or the em
us initiative is is um aiming to do is to accomplish that and so we have still me on YouTube who wants to know why go back to the Moon debah yeah that's a great question um so if you think of of lunar exploration as think about it on Earth if you went to the Sahara Desert and that was the only place you went to on the earth you would not know everything about how diverse the environments are on earth and how the vast majority like the vast diversity of life that um permeates from you know the bo
ttom of the ocean to the tops of of mountains and and everything in between um so going someplace new on the lunar surface is is critical for our understanding of of the vast diversity of lunar geology and lunar history as well um the Paul missions went to uh diff different areas they definitely uh explored very different areas but they were actually pretty concentrated on the lunar near side near the equator and going to the South polar region of the Moon offers us an opportunity um to explore
a very different region very different environment um that's part of what this intuitive machines mission was helping us understand what the surface environment is like in a more polar location and then how do you communicate with when the earth is so low on the horizon like it is in the South polar region that introduces some really complex uh conditions for how do you communicate back home um so there are unique challenges but there are also unique opportunities um to investigating the South P
ole region and then you also look to um the future some future clipse missions that we have already on the books to go to the lunar bar side and there's a very different environment on the lunar Far Side as well that can give us insight into when the moon formed how it formed and um what its internal structure is like so lots of opportunities coming up yeah and it sounds like lots of data coming up and so we have Chandra on X who wants to know will any of this data that's collected from the payl
oads be available to the public Sue it absolutely will when NASA builds instruments that go to various different places in the solar system the goal is always to make sure that that data becomes publicly available so there's a place that's called the planetary data system it's PDS for short and this is where we take all of the science data and we archive it so that everybody can have access to that data in the future so it's very exciting for us that we have a way to share this data outside of N
ASA with the rest of the public with the other scientists that are out there uh not just in the US but abroad as well that is great to know and so my next question Sue or Deborah you know one of y'all jump in but this is a question that uh we're getting a lot from folks online a lot of people seem concerned so uh I'm GNA ask it it's from low Consciousness on X who says first of all huge congrats on this great accomplishment and that you know this time OD seems to have tilted a bit on landing and
what are your thoughts on that so um and he also they also follow up to say am I correct in understanding that did not have a negative impact on the mission so I can start with that and then I'll let Deborah uh jump in so it was really for me incredibly interesting to be part of the entire mission to be in their mission control area throughout uh from launch to landing and all the way until the very last moment that OD was sending data back so when you have a a mission where where it doesn't la
nd completely upright but it has a little bit of a tilt it absolutely has an effect on how you communicate back the thing to me that was really incredible was watching all of the people all of the camaraderie all of the collaboration that we had that their team had and how hard everybody worked to ensure that instead of having it lean over and then having that be Mission end instead we were able to operate all of our active payloads from this lunar surface we have um evidence now that even the t
he laser retro reflector that's on the surface will be able to be seen from the lunar reconnaissance Orbiter called L Ro that's a spacecraft in orbit so watching this all happening the thing to remember that's really important it's so hard to communicate this is a really complex machine it's the first time that it's ever ever flown in space there are miles and miles of wire and cables and things that need to communicate engines that have a brand new technology that's never been tested before and
so trying to get all of those pieces to work perfectly for the very very first time that it has ever flown uh means that you allow for no uh allowance for things not to go right and when you're too afraid that things are going to fail it also means that you don't allow for these incredible successes to occur to allow yourself to really face the challenges and when you face the challenges everybody works together and so I saw people gosh they were working so many hours of the day we had people s
leeping in offices and laying on the couches because they didn't want to leave in case somebody needed to get their help so we all pulled together as a community and there were so many things that they you know OD would send back some data and we'd have to figure out how to fix it or how to work with the spacecraft to to really you know make some adjustments along the way and all the people would get together and figure come back and say we have a solution and then something else would come back
and we'd say hm we have to think about that and we'd all come together and come with another solution and so the way to really innovate and make sure that something it succeeds is to allow for those challenges to happen and then really come together to work through them uh as a team the IM team worked together that the IM team worked with NASA uh so all of us including the the uh commercial payloads did this incredible job where I felt like every time they came in and said we have something tha
t we need to work on about the fifth sixth time they came in we all looked at each other and smiled and said but we know that you know how to fix these things you're just going to pull another rabbit out of the hat and then the next time they'd come in they'd say okay we have it resolved we know what to do so by allowing this really complex inst to go through the whole life cycle of launching for the first time transiting to the moon for the first time and allowing for it to figure out to maybe
not land perfectly but then to use that new challenge to figure out how to communicate back to the Earth it presented other kinds of data that we never expected to get back so we had for instance one of our uh rules has um for antennas and we were supposed to deploy all of them at the same time on the surface one after another on the surface well the sun decided that it wanted to deploy one of those before it even landed on the surface but instead of the team being disappointed they were excited
because then they were able to collect data when we were in transit to the Moon different data that we didn't expect and like Deborah was saying when we got to the surface because it was lying on its side it allowed us to really dig into how do you communicate when the sun is so low on the horizon and the Earth is so low on the horizon that the data is kind of bouncing around on the surface as it comes back without that we don't have as much data to really understand the challenges as well and
to better prepare for even im2 as well as for emis so I know it's a very long-winded way of saying that things didn't happen exactly as we anticipated but thank goodness for all of the additional data and knowledge that we gained uh and really the team that bonded together uh in the process of all of that and what a story of just like perseverance and overcoming like Ingenuity everything and so Deborah do you have anything to add to that um just um one thing that I'd add is Clips was always expe
cted to be a a risk tolerant initiative um the idea is that usually um space travel um and exploration has been pretty much entirely in the hands of governments and government agencies across the world um that those government agencies tend to have a lot more resources than for in this case um private companies and when a and this one of the amazing feats of this and one of the accomplishments of intuitive machines they were the first um entity to land on the surface of the Moon private company
to land on the surface of the Moon on their first try that is an incredible incredible success I you know yes as Sue said it wasn't you know straight up and down it was on its on like slightly tilted and yes that had implications for the mission but they did that and they operated our payloads all of our powered payloads on the surface and Beed data back that is an incredible accomplishment and they and as Su said they learned so much about how that spacecraft works that they're going to take al
l of those Lessons Learned and apply them to im2 and they and they're also working with the other companies that are in the clips um vendor pool the the all of the vendors who are eligible for proposing to these um pass orders that you said these deliveries to help them with Lessons Learned I mean not you know proprietary Technologies is going to be proprietary to the company but they're learning lessons that they're sharing because they understand that we're establishing a lunar economy and the
success of one is the success of all and so we're applying these Lessons Learned to the Future we're going to have other lessons that we're going to learn right I mean this is a risk tolerant Endeavor there will be other um other lessons to learn but I really think that they learned how that spacecraft works and we're really looking forward to im2 to see what what their comp what how they applied their lessons learned to their own spacecraft and we're also looking forward to fireflies uh in myt
h delivery later this year uh to cheer them on as they learn their own lessons about their own spacecraft yeah and also to remember that NASA also you know when we were very very early on the first time when we were building Apollo and learning lessons we had failures along the way as well that helped us to better prepare for our future missions right so expecting us to get things perfectly is like putting a child on a bike and expecting that that they'll get it perfectly the first time and they
'll they'll never falter on their way but allowing that to really you know grow really helps us in the long term so the fact that they got all the way to the moon and landed softly we we worked on the surface of the Moon for a whole week is really to me just absolutely incredible we didn't even do that with our first Apollo mission right our first one we just went around and came back uh and then we tried Landing later where they went all the way to landing on the surface for their first one so
it's very exciting it is exciting and so Steve Graves on YouTube wants to know with the success of odyss does NASA expect to have regular Moon missions on say a weekly basis a monthly basis in the future Deborah yeah that's that's so our plan NASA's plan is to uh have two deliveries a year now obviously this year we have a kind of a crunch a crunch period where we have four in one year um but the goal is to have two but what I'd say is NASA's goal is we don't want to be the only customer on thes
e on these deliveries the idea is that as we establish this lunar uh economy that there will be other V other companies other academic institutions other countries that want to take advantage of this opportunity um and many opportunities to go to the lunar surface so really as many as the customer base can support is what the eventual delivery Cadence can be and so talking again about deliveries to the Moon um NASA deliveries to the Moon we have a great question for you sue it is from Matthew He
nson on YouTube who asks what is lunar Trailblazer and and how does it work oh my so that's a great question um and it's actually not an instrument that's on one of my task orders so I'm gonna I'm gonna hand that one over to Deborah I know my own payloads very intimately um but not as many of the other ones on the other task orders Deborah can you step in yeah so lunar Trailblazer is kind of is the next step for understanding the composition of the lunar surface so it'll be an orbiting um Suite
of instruments that's looking very specifically for where the water is in these lunar in these um polar per Shack regions in the South Pole but also in the North Pole um so just kind of global distribution of those um and it's going to be delivered um but later this year is the plan um to go and so it'll be on a a delivery to the lunar surface and it will be dropped off in orbit um on while the Lander goes to the surface uh but yeah we're really looking forward to having those measurements um th
ere're supposed to be really high resolution so we'll be able to see in fine detail um where on the surface uh these uh volatile bearing deposits are and so it's a great followup to that we have Julian on YouTube who wants to know if there is water on the moon will it be the same as Earth that's a great question and the answer to that is yes when you have water right it's two hydrogens and an oxygen connected together and so water on the earth is the same as water on the moon or on comets or in
fact on other planetary systems as well so this is really one of our drivers for going to the South Pole a lot of people say well why are you going to the South Pole it's very cold down there and and it's hard to communicate but what is one of the key elements for life to exist and everybody who's ever gone to their faucet to fill up a glass of water knows that in order for life to exist we definitely need a resource of water so our goal is to build a permanent lunar base um at the South Pole or
at least a lunar base that that exists for a period of time at the South Pole those astronauts that are going there are going to need a source of water and at least uh on the International Space Station we have ways that we can take water and clean it up to allow the astronauts to drink and to live and the more water that you can Harvest from the Moon and from these permanently shadowed areas that Deborah is talking about the less we have to launch from the surface of the Earth so it saves us a
ll a lot of uh money as well um as mass it goes up and down all of these things play a role uh in trying to make um make these decisions but water itself is the same everywhere in the universe it's a great question great question if you do you mind if I add to that um so yeah so s absolutely right like water in its in its chemical form is is the same throughout the solar system even um Earth Moon and comets and everything just just like Sue said one thing I'd add so from an exploration Point Sue
is spoton from a science Point there's one other component to W to the questions that are we're looking for in water and that's look specifically at the oxygen and hydrogen have different um different molecular weights so you can look at the Isotopes of oxygen and hydrogen and kind of get a a picture for where they came from and that's one of the real critical questions from a science perspective that we're looking to answer on in the South Pole region is where did that water come from there ar
e at least three different sources that we think of there's the sun the sun is is peppering the entire solar system with hydrogen all the time um and that's a kind of think of it as a renewable resource it's it's peppering the surface of the Moon with hydrogen and that hydrogen can can uh bond with with loose hydrogen or loose oxygen on the surface and form hydroxy and potentially water there's also comets and asteroids we know there's water on those bodies that could be delivered to the Moon um
and those carry a very different isotopic signature kind of a thumb print um for the water and to tell us where it came from or it could come from inside the moon itself um from um in the early 2000s some very in intriguing scientific studies uh found that there was actually water that was sourced from inside the moon and it erupted in volcanic eruptions um on the lunar surface and release that water um and if it happened in those eruptions were massive enough and fast enough we could actually
have become a pretty significant source for water but that those eruptions were really old in history um so understanding where that that water where those volatiles would have ended up um and whether they they kind of whether the South Pole region acted as a snc for those re for those volatiles um will help us understand where the water on the moon came from and that by extension can also help us understand where water on Earth came from some really interesting questions out there have to answe
r yeah absolutely and so I actually have a fun followup to that so it's trano on X who wants to know will we ever be able to drink Moon water and how much water is under the surface to get at deborra yeah I think that's a combination it is isn't it right so we we also bring us a limited I had mentioned earlier we bring a limited amount of water up to the International Space Station and they have to figure out how to reclaim that water so they have um different ways to pull the water that's that'
s waste water and turn it back into drinking water so when we go to the surface of the Moon like Deborah was mentioning earlier we are trying to learn with our clipse missions what kind of water is it are they in chunks of ice are is it like intimately mixed where it's kind of like a dirty snowball like how is it that it's mixed in uh but either way the goal is to create the technology that's necessary to be able to extract the water from the lunar soil um in order to be able to drink that water
from the surface of the Moon and just as another note uh if anybody feels like they're now concerned that we're drinking Moon water instead of earth water just remember that that when the earth and moon formed they they formed as this planetary body so the kinds of water that are on the moon we expect are very very similar to the kinds of water that we have here on the earth so we expect that from not just expect but from the the uh investigations that we've done into the water that's in our ow
n oceans there's indication that that water comes in part from comets and asteroids as well as comes from original Cula that the Earth and the moon formed from so there's similar the same kinds of sources that would be the source of the water on the moon are the same sources that the Earth has had for its water that the deor did a fantastic job overviewing so hopefully that uh that gives them a little bit of comfort knowing that that's it'll be safe water once it's it's properly cleaned and uh t
aken from the Moon also very cool to think about that one day we will be drinking Moon water so um and so I I know we've touched on this before but for our viewers that are just tuning in I want to ask it again we have David Sanchez on YouTube who is wondering will there ever be a crew to land on the moon again Deborah yes absolutely that is the plan um so NASA's emus initiative is um working to get lunar uh get Astron to the surface of the Moon um with a with a goal to to study the South polar
region of the Moon um and the reason that we've chosen the South Pole um is uh because there are like we've been talking about resources potentially in the south pool region um that could prove very valuable for uh sustain for enabling a sustained lunar presence a human lunar presence on that the South polar region but also those those resources are very close to areas of prolonged illumination um so the sun can power the the um Hardware the architecture that we need uh to support humans can be
powered from the Sun and these islands of prolonged light um in the South po region but yes we're sending humans back to the Moon we're very busy planning um every all the science investigations that they are going to achieve once they're there and Eclipse again is a first step in this road to sustainable lunar presence on the moon and we have mansur Amed on Facebook who asks you know what are the key scientific objectives from the new instruments that have been operating on the moon over the pa
st week Sue would you mind um summarizing that again sure absolutely so this this kind of overall picture that we're a very early uh Mission it's the very first one one that intuitive machines has built and sent and one of the first that we've contracted with commercial companies in order to go back to the moon so the suite of instruments on the first intuitive machines Lander were very carefully selected to try to help us to better understand how to navigate safely to the Moon how to to land sa
fely on the moon how to communicate with your Lander uh back to the moon and how to look down and see how the dust gets churned up so that in the future while we're designing spacecraft that we have an understanding of what kind of dust and rocks and things like that might get kicked up by your Lander it will help us to better design future Landers for the Sur that go down to the surface of the Moon but in addition some of the instruments that allow us to study the dust um the stereo cameras for
lunar PR surface studies and the radio wave observations at the lunar surface for the photo electron sheep these are designed to help us then also understand does the dust how does the dust come up as we land but also how does the dust end up getting charged anybody who's walked around on carpet and kind of created a charg and then gone and hit something and it Zapped their finger right so the there's also this charging that can happen on the lunar surface from the sunlight that's coming in and
so the astronauts themselves are going to have dust that ends up clinging to their SP space suits so how do we design space suits and how do we design instruments to help figure out how we deal with all of the lunar dust so there's a lot of different things um that we can do with these early instruments to help us better prepare better designed Technologies not just the Technologies of the future instruments but also space suits and how we're living and working in space and Deborah how do we pr
ioritize these questions that we are trying to to answer with these selected investigations yeah um so NASA looks to the science Community to help us understand what um the science objectives are and what the priorities are uh so NASA works with the nationaly of science and engineering and Medicine um and every decade once every 10 years we ask theems to come up with the overarching uh priorities for science um and for this the science mission directorate for um Planetary Exploration and so we a
t Nasa look to the science Community to help us establish those priorities and then um for the uh instruments that we're talking about for Clips we look and see uh we we ask again we ask the science Community um to propose instruments and they are asked to link their investigations to those what we call the decadal um science priorities but um but yeah in the end the whole mission is to uh further the knowledge that we have of how the moon formed how the solar system evolved over time um and how
all of that helps us understand where we come from on Earth as well uh so it all turns back to to science investigations um and driven by priorities established by the science community and it's it's very cool too to see that this is you know a global unified effort um that everybody has a voice in this and so I have a final question for you both what advice would you give to someone who is interested in joining NASA's efforts to return humans to the Moon Sue why don't you go first oh my goodne
ss uh it's it's such an incredible EXP experience right to work with a lot of other people that are so driven by the science by the technology and even and understanding especially understanding that there are challenges along the way I mean we talked last week in our press conference about how Odie our Lander is this scrappy little dude where every time there's things that need to be worked on that we all work on together and and he always comes back and and he really helps us to enable all of
the science and all the technology but the reality is that he enables the Science and Technology because of the Teamwork because people understand that it's a challenge it's not something that's super simple it's something you have to work really hard at but the rewards are just incredible right here we are and we have this Lander that ran for a whole week on the surface of the Moon and collected data on the way there for us in ways that that it's just been incredible to be part of as a team wit
h the commercial industry with an intuitive machines with naso with each of our payload teams our payload teams have worked tirelessly for years getting these payloads ready and so it's just understanding that if that's the kind of challenge that you love if that's the kind of incredible experience that you want to have that that's the kind of reward that you get so my my input to them is that throughout my career this has really been one of the most incredible experiences that I've had um I als
o didn't get a lot of sleep over the last couple of weeks but it was so worth it to work with all the teams and this uh this great spacecraft um Deborah being one of them but also our full Clips operations team I am the payload teams it's just been an incredible experience thank you and Deborah what what about any advice from you yeah absolutely so I think you know I grew up knowing that I wanted to be a scientist I you know took the classes and school and all of that when I and I always wanted
to work for NASA like this is a dream come true for me um to work with cultivating Strate coming up with strategy and and implementing opportunities for science when I joined NASA you know you always think of oh science and engineering and all of like that's what I need to focus on to be a part of NASA joining NASA that's just not true like there's so much Beyond science and engineering that makes NASA what it is it's such a there's artists there's graphic designers there's communication Special
ists there's so many other aspects to the mission to achieving Mission success so my advice is if if NASA in space exploration is something that you're passionate about that's that's great you can find whatever interests you and apply it to that and there's a there's a place for you as part of NASA's Mission so find something that you're passionate about and There's an opportunity for you at Nasa thank you so much for that great advice you know as you mentioned I do comms like you said we've got
mathematicians we've got lawyers everything so there is a place for everybody at Nasa and that's really something incredible to remember unfortunately this is all the time that we have for today but Sue and Deborah congratulations on the success of this incredible Endeavor and you know thank you again for taking so many questions from our viewers online today I also want to say thank you to you and all the viewers this has just been a real pleasure and we hope that all the excitement and and al
l of the work that we put into it really helps to inspire you each of you individually uh to become future Space Explorers and thank you so much for having us this was a pleasure to answer your questions and uh look forward to the next exciting Mission down the line online yes and thank you too to everybody that joined us online today it is always so much fun getting to just interact with you live and we hope that you enjoyed learning more about the recent moonlanding and all of the exciting NAS
A science that is in store now if you would like to stay up to-date on NASA's Clips initiative and how it advances our Artemis missions follow NASA emis on Facebook X and Instagram there you'll receive updates about the program as well as operational milestones for active missions like the one that we talked about today for the latest science from the Moon you can follow NASA Moon on Facebook and x and NASA solar system on Instagram thank you all and see you next [Music] time
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