(music throughout) Imagine if you were an alien
who was visiting the Earth for the first time from some other galaxy.
Imagine only visiting the United States and never visiting any other part
of the Earth's surface.
That's essentially what we've done with the Apollo missions, really been able
to do wonderful and groundbreaking science with the samples collected
during the Apollo missions.
But again, we visited only a very small part of the lunar surface.
The way that I think about it is it's the equivalent of,
you know, landing on Earth and getting rocks from Kansas.
It would give us insight into one particular location on the earth,
but not at all the diversity of what
we see on the Earth, what we know is present on the Earth.
So the ability to go to a different site, a different location, get different
samples, will just enrich what we've already learned from our Apollo samples.
There's a lot left to be learned about the moon,
and it starts with the South Pole,
Artemis astronauts will fulfill
a different mission in a unique environment.
While the Apollo astronauts who visited the moon's surface between 1969
and 1972 landed near the equator.
Artemis Astronauts will venture to the moon's South Pole region
frigid, rugged and with unique light and darkness,
conditions that make it an ideal location for exploration.
The South Pole region is also home to the rim of the moon's largest,
oldest and deepest crater called South Pole Aitken.
It takes up almost a quarter of the moon and is so deep it
exposes portions of the moon's interior.
Yeah, the South Pole is it's fascinating.
There are some very unique types of rocks that are at the South Pole
that will allow us to understand
the entire history, not just of the moon, but potentially of the solar system
very early on in lunar history.
We think that there was this increased period or very intense
period of huge material hitting the surface of the moon, creating
these really large craters or
giant holes, which we actually call basins.
So getting a sample of impact melt from this basin
would kind of help us bracket that early period of time.
The Moon's South Pole region has resources that are vital for long term exploration
because the moon is barely tilted relative to the sun.
The sun hovers over the horizon at the South Pole.
Imagine a flashlight turned on laying on a table.
That's how the sun illuminates the South Pole.
Light at the South Pole strikes at such a low angle,
it brushes only areas of higher elevation, such as crater rims.
These locations have sunlight for extended periods of time to harness for power.
At the same time, the bottoms of some deep
craters are shrouded in constant darkness.
Scientists have measured
the coldest temperatures in the solar system inside these craters,
which have become known as perfect environments for preserving water for eons.
Over time,
there is individual molecules of water and carbon dioxide
and other gases that actually bounce around the surface of the moon.
And when they get to one of these cold spots, they actually get stuck.
Though we call those places cold traps.
And if you do that for millions and even billions of years, you can
actually build up a pretty significant deposit of water and other ices.
From an exploration perspective, if we can understand
just how much water there is
and where it is and how to get it out of the regolith of the moon,
we can turn it into really important things like drinking water
for astronauts and even rocket fuel to take them back home.
So really understanding these resources and how to use them
is one of the objectives of the Artemis program
and it's what makes the South Pole of the moon so exciting.
We know the moon in incredible detail,
thanks in large part to NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, or LRO.
LRO has been circling the moon since 2009.
It's the longest lived spacecraft there.
Through tens of thousands of orbits and data from seven instruments,
LRO has mapped the moon's temperature, geology, radiation environment
and is providing insight on how the moon is changing over
time.
LRO is led by Dr.
Noah Petro, a planetary geologist at NASA's
Goddard Space Flight Center.
LRO is this incredible machine.
It was launched in 2009 as the opportunity to go back to the moon, to create this
three dimensional, high resolution, high definition atlas of the Moon.
Where are there safe landing sites for human and robotic explorers?
So what LRO is doing is really giving us the tools,
the material, the data we need to make those missions successful.
For many
years, LRO's elliptical orbit was closest to the moon during the spacecraft's
pass over the South Pole.
So scientists have more information about the South Pole region
than any other region of the moon.
We know that that we can do
more and build upon the legacy of Apollo.
But to do that, we needed a higher resolution dataset.
So we wanted to know where the hazards were.
We wanted to know where the geologic features were that we want to go explore.
And so LRO has created that database.
Incidentally, the LRO data volume is now over 1.3 petabytes.
It's the largest volume of data that NASA has ever collected
from any planetary body.
It's remarkable.
And so
what we've done now in support of Artemis.
It's a part of other NASA's missions to the moon as we created special maps.
We share them with the public and we share them
with the various engineers and scientists who are going to help enact and make
Artemis a reality.
You know,
this is basically a Google Maps of the moon
taken from pictures from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera.
And you can just zoom in and see a five meter boulder on the surface of the moon.
It's just crazy.
I could spend all day and I have spent all day sometimes
just browsing around different parts of the moon, just looking up at the rocks.
This wealth of information will make it easier
to find ideal locations for NASA Basecamp and to quickly identify
scientifically interesting areas to visit nearby.
So it's my my real belief that we have an opportunity with Artemis
to do something different than Apollo.
We build on Apollo, we learn from Apollo, but we want to expand
what Apollo was able to do and build this this presence on the moon
that is more than just three days, more than just six individual missions,
but a much larger program that eventually will result in the ability
to go on to Mars.
Mars is is quite a bit longer away from our own planet.
Then, of course, the moon is.
It takes several months in some cases to get to Mars.
And it's therefore going to be really critical
when we have astronauts walking around on the surface of Mars
to be able to stay there for longer periods of time.
You've just spent six or so months to get there.
You want to really be able to explore the surface around you
and having the ability to live off the land and know how to
conduct exploration for longer periods of time is going to be critical
for Martian exploration.
And lessons learned for that sustainable type of exploration
start right here at the moon.
So there's still so much for us to learn from going back
to the moon from a scientific perspective, that it's a no brainer in my head.
But with Mars in the horizon
as our kind of end goal this is an important step for us to take.
And then also, just kind of from a human aspect,
we all have this kind of intrinsic desire to explore.
I think it's it's in all of us and certainly in us as a society.
And so I think setting our sights on something
and accomplishing this goal together is really important
just for international relations, for, you know, just coming together
as a human, humankind, you know, the human spirit.
I think that that's a piece of what we're doing that we can't ignore as well.
I have three kids aged ten, six and two.
I talk about space often with them.
The great thing that my parents did for me.
It was, let me find my path.
I also look at my daughter and I, I think,
okay Amelia, you know, she keeps saying she wants to be a firefighter
and a construction worker and an astronaut.
I said, Amelia, you can do all three and be an astronaut.
Well, I mean, when you're an astronaut, you'll learn how to fight a fire in space.
You get to learn how to build something. You've got to do all those things.
What they'll become.
I'm so excited to find out.
I have no idea what they're going to.
They're going to end up gravitating towards.
So why is the moon my favorite body to study?
I think growing up, you can you know, you can always
see it in the sky.
You can see some beautiful stars.
And maybe Mars or Jupiter is like small little dots,
but the moon is just there in all its glory.
It's like our nearest and dearest neighbor.
And you can even even
with the naked eye, you could start picking out features on the moon.
I felt I was really cool.
You know, this is thousands of miles away
and you can still kind of be a geologist from the ground if you want to.
And I felt that's really cool.
And that's why I always wanted to study the moon.
Just seeing
people walk on the moon on this foreign planetary body.
You know, looking at images like the one behind me here is the thing
that always blows my mind.
I will say with my two year old, what I have noticed recently
and this is wonderful, is that when he sees the moon,
we're out for a walk, we're driving around or outside a window of a moon moon.
And just the fact that he can look up and see the moon moon,
that makes me so happy.