My name is Kelsey Young, and my role with the Artemis missions
is, I am the Artemis Science Flight Operations Lead.
What that means is I'm responsible for making sure that science,
all of our science objectives, are incorporated into the Artemis
missions from a perspective of the flight control team.
Do we have science representation on the flight control team? Does
that science team have the infrastructure that they need to be successful?
How will Artemis astronauts accomplish science objectives?
How will they be trained?
How will we design traverses around science objectives?
So my role as the Artemis Science Flight Operations Lead
is really to make sure that science has the right role
to play in the operations of these exciting Artemis missions.
For Artemis II, my role on the Artemis II mission is
I am the lead for the lunar science objectives for the mission.
So when the crew are flying by the moon, they'll be taking pictures,
of course, out the window at the lunar surface.
They'll be making observations,
and my role is to lead those lunar science objectives.
The JETT5 mission was the highest fidelity Artemis
III surface mission simulation to date.
It included a science team that works both before the mission
and during the mission,
to insert science objectives in as high a fidelity way as possible.
What that science team did was, before the mission happened,
they interrogated the landing site with, of course, their science glasses on.
What science questions did they want to answer?
Where do they want the crew member to go to address those science objectives?
And the EVA, or spacewalk, traverses were built in large part
around those science objectives.
During the JETT5 test, that same science team supported the EVA’s
from Mission Control in Houston.
So they were able to provide science guidance up to the crew
on where to sample, how to best address the science objectives,
and how to maximize the return from the JETT5 mission,
just like they'll be doing with the Artemis III mission to the lunar south pole.
Mission simulations like
JETT5 are so critical to prepare the team for Artemis surface exploration.
It's critical to test the hardware, like the geology
sampling tools in these high fidelity analog environments,
but it's also really important to prepare the ground teams, the flight
control team, and specifically the science team for what it's going to be like
to actually be conducting these science operations on the lunar surface.
For example, how should the science team structure themselves?
How do they insert that science guidance, those science recommendations,
up into the rest of the mission control team?
How do we develop the ground support infrastructure,
the tools that we need to work in mission control?
These mission simulations are really critical
to give us these testing opportunities, to allow us to figure out how our
teams will operate.
The San
Francisco volcanic field is the field site for the JETT5 mission simulation.
It's near Flagstaff, Arizona, which is an area that's actually long
been used as an analog for preparing for planetary surface exploration.
Apollo crews trained not too far away from where the JETT5 mission simulation
occurred, and that San Francisco volcanic field was chosen in large part
because the terrain, you know,
mimics the lunar surface in a lot of really critical ways.
It has the sci - the types of science objectives accessible to mission
simulation crews that Apollo and Artemis astronauts have answered and will answer.
It's the right scale of exploration.
So the science targets, the EVA targets, the spacewalk targets
are at the right scale of exploration that Artemis astronauts will experience.
So it gives us a really high fidelity and robust way to test our hardware
and our infrastructure in a high fidelity environment.
And for me, as a scientist, it's really exciting because it enables us
to ask robust and compelling science questions
that our crew members for JETT5 will have to answer
and have to rely on the science team real time to help them answer,
which makes it a really ideal testing opportunity to start to prepare for the
Artemis missions.
The JETT5 EVA’s, or spacewalks, the traverses
that the astronauts were running out in the field,
were designed in part around science objectives.
They included astronauts visiting sites of interest
from a scientific perspective, collecting samples, collecting samples of the rocks
in the regolith in the area to answer science questions
that the science team was really excited to have the astronauts perspective on.
We conducted some of the JETT5 EVA’s during the day and some of them at night,
and the reason for that was to test a variety of lighting conditions.
One of the exciting things about exploration at the lunar south pole
is that the lighting environment is really dynamic.
The sun is going to be moving within the course of one surface mission,
and the astronauts will have to be prepared
to encounter a variety of different lighting environments.
So by testing some during the day and some at night, it enables
our teams to prepare for everything that Artemis astronauts might experience.
The JETT5 EVA’s were
conducted with astronauts in the field out in Arizona in our test site,
but they were supported by a mission control team back on Earth,
so to speak, which in this case meant Houston, Texas, in Mission Control.
So we had a full EVA flight control team supporting the JETT5 EVA’s,
the traverses as they were conducted, and as a part of that flight
control team, we had a full science team in the loop as well.
So just like we expect for future Artemis missions, we had a science back room
full of lunar scientists and geologists providing guidance to the crew real time,
and we also had a science flight controller embedded in the EVA
flight control team as that sort of senior voice for science
within the rest of the EVA flight control disciplines.
The Science Evaluation
Room is the science back room for Artemis missions.
And we actually had that science back room populated for the JETT5 EVA’s as well.
What the science back room, or Science Evaluation Room for Artemis
is, is actually the brain trust of lunar scientists and geologists
who are responsible for accomplishing our lunar science and lunar surface science
and geologic observations and objectives during each Artemis mission.
In that room, we have a whole host of the lunar science
and geology community represented, and their job is to feed insights
and recommendations up to the crew during a mission to make sure
that those objectives are represented and accomplished throughout the mission.
So it's really kind of where the lunar science magic happens
within the Flight Control team and within Mission Control
back on Earth during an Artemis mission.
The Science Evaluation Room, or science back room, for an Artemis mission
has a lot of different kind of roles and expertise represented within it.
You have lunar scientists, you have geologists, you have experts
in imagery and imagery analysis because images are,
of course, a critical data set for the science community after a mission.
You have experts in sample science, people who are really wanting
to study the samples when they return to Earth.
You have software experts and lunar data experts all working together to make sure
that the science
objectives, the lunar science objectives of that mission accomplished,
and that science expertise
can be injected through the Flight Control team real time.
Artemis lunar science objectives will include
those accomplished through geology, through geologic sampling.
We’ll be using geology tools, like a rock hammer, to get samples in situ
to collect for return to Earth.
But they'll also include
science payloads or science instruments that crew deploy on the lunar surface,
but that return data back to the science teams for those instruments on Earth.
So the lunar science team, the Artemis mission science teams,
will include those representing geology, lunar science, the lunar science payloads,
and they'll all be working together to accomplish the lunar science objectives.
It takes a lot of work to create a geology and science
well-trained crew member, and we do that in a number of different settings.
We do it in the classroom, we do it in the field,
we do it through mission simulations, and we do it by pulling on science
community members from across the number of science disciplines
for which we have Artemis science objectives.
Definitely takes a science village to create that well-trained crew member,
and we're fortunate to have those well-trained
crew members as our science team proxies on the lunar surface.