>>KENNEDY: We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do
the other things. Not because they are easy but because they
are hard! >>ARMSTRONG: That's one small step for man...
>>NARRATOR: One of humanity's greatest achievements.
>>ARMSTRONG: One giant leap for mankind. >>NARRATOR: And one of
humanity's greatest scientific tools. You might be
surprised to learn that the Hubble Space Telescope and
landing on the moon in 2024 have a lot to do with each other. In
fact, when you think of Hubble, usually those gorgeous pictures
first come to mind. But after Jim Garvin’s 2005 research using
Hubble, what have we learned about prospecting the moon for
locations to establish a human presence for the 2024 Artemis
mission? >>GARVIN: Hubble's one little piece of that masterpiece
we've been working on for 50 years, so that people can use
the Moon as a special place, as Mother Nature's great control
experiment next door.
>> "Hubble and Going Forward to the Moon"
>>NARRATOR: 340 miles above the Earth’s surface, Hubble orbits
over the distorting effects of the atmosphere, enabling us to
look deeper into space than any ground based telescope. Hubble
was specially designed to be upgraded while in space. Through
five servicing missions over the years, astronauts have repaired,
restored, and updated Hubble to make it better than ever. The
Hubble Space telescope has taught us a lot about our place
in the universe, but back in 2005. then NASA chief scientist
Jim Garvin decided to focus Hubble’s powerful instruments on
something a little closer to home. >>GARVIN: What if we used
Hubble to do what it's best at? Be a precision photometer in
wavelengths where it's very convenient, the Lunar soils
light up like firecrackers if they're rich in certain
minerals. We know from Apollo samples that some of the Lunar
soils and rocks are literally ore bodies. And so the idea of
using Hubble with this exquisite ultraviolet imaging capability
with the ACS instrument at that point, and then maybe later with
others, to target the Moon came alive. >>NARRATOR: Imagine,
you’re 240,000 miles away from Earth, yeah you’ll be getting
packages from home every once in a while, but you’re going to
need to be self sufficient too. And that’s where Hubble comes
in… >>GARVIN: We realized that some of the Moon rocks might be
resources, and if they found them on Earth we'd be mining
them. So using the eyes of Hubble where it has exquisite
precision and resolution in ways that go beyond our eyes, beyond
normal spacecraft we fly to orbit planets, was an
opportunity to use an astronomical asset, a historical
one, a cathedral to the stars to observe the Moon in a way where
we could test, prospect for these resources in three places.
And we were spectacular beyond success with the capability of
Hubble to see things we couldn't see, at finer scales. Hubble
became a resource prospector to light the way for following
missions, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, to fill in the gaps, to
paint the picture of the Moon that we're going to go back to.
We were attempting to be catalysts, pathfinders, for how
we might use the Moon in ways that are more creative than many
had ever thought it could be used. What if we could live off
the Moon's resources in ways that enable us not to have to
bring everything with us?
[INSPIRATIONAL MUSIC]
One object that's in our destiny is the Moon. We've been there, six times, 50 years ahead of our
time with project Apollo. We're ready to go back, women and men,
for the long haul. And that prime directive will put people
on the Moon again in the year 2024. Hubble has been one of
those pieces of the mosaic of information to help us
understand what the Moon offers, what we could use the Moon for
as we're there. So now we could see our Universe, our solar
system in a new light, and now we're ready to capitalize on
that. And that's what Artemis, what Hubble, what the future of
space exploration is about. Let's capitalize on what we've
learned. We're out of the dark ages, we're coming into the new
light, let's go!
[INSPIRING MUSIC]
[SILENCE]